Brandon Nimmo currently finds himself setting the table for the first-place Mets, proving to be a spark plug at the top of a lineup that has hopes of bringing a World Series back to Queens.
But it turns out that there was a time when Nimmo nearly walked away from the game entirely.
In an interview with Ken Davidoff, Nimmo explained that he struggled with Triple-A Las Vegas at the start of the year, so much so that he considered dropping baseball and going back to school to further his education.
“[My father and I] had a realistic conversation of, ‘If baseball’s done, what’s next?’” Nimmo told Davidoff. “‘How do you handle this, after putting this many years into it?’
“We were brainstorming a little bit, but what we landed on was, it might be going back to school. And then my dad just kept encouraging me that, ‘If this wasn’t what God wanted for you, he’s going to open up another door and we’re going to go down that path.’”
Soon after, though, Nimmo found a way to turn things around, thanks in part to a conversation he had with one of his former American Legion coaches, Tagg Lain, who watched Nimmo play in three games with the 51s.
“At the end of the three days, we had an hour-long, two-hour-long conversation after one of the games and he kind of just laid it out,” Nimmo said. "He said, ‘Here’s what I think you need to do.’ There was one mechanical thing (lowering his hands on the bat). The rest of it was a mental approach (focusing on the outside part of the plate before two strikes). And he said, ‘Just go try this out for a week and see what you do.’”
Nimmo was able to make a 180-degree turn, and by late June, he was called up to the majors, with former 51s manager Wally Backman thoroughly impressed by what Nimmo was able to accomplish.
“Wally, when he gave me the news that I was going up, actually told me, ‘That’s the largest improvement that I’ve seen by someone in a year, where in the beginning it was very questionable,’” Nimmo explained. “’What you’re doing now plays. If you keep doing that, you’ll play a long time in the big leagues.’”
Throughout his seven seasons with the Mets, Nimmo has been an on-base machine, posting an OBP of .383 with an .821 career OPS.
Not bad for a kid from Wyoming, who worked his way into becoming an elite table-setter.
“People are going to tell you what you should and shouldn’t do your whole life: ‘Oh, yeah, you can chase this dream, but you can’t chase that dream,’” Nimmo said. “But ultimately, if you put your mind to it and you’re willing to pay the price with the hard work that it takes, nothing can really stand in your way. …Really, the only limitations are what we put on ourselves.
“Obviously it helps that I had amazing, supportive parents, and that was instrumental in me getting to where I am. But if I have that support system and I'm willing to put in the work, I think that you can do just about anything you put your mind to."