Brandon Nimmo doesn’t need an All-Star nomination to prove his value to the Mets

Here’s an oldie but a goodie:

That was on December 10, 2017, at the Walt Disney World Swan and Dolphin Resort in Orlando, Florida. Word had just gotten around that the Yankees would make a splash at the Winter Meetings: They wanted to trade Starlin Castro, Jose Devers and Jorge Guzman for Giancarlo Stanton.

Stanton, who had hit 59 home runs and scored 132 runs and beat out Joey Votto for National League MVP voting in 2017, would join a lineup that already included Aaron Judge, who hit 52 home runs as a rookie in 2017. And the Marlins got a big chunk of the contract, too. It felt like “No, no, Nanette” again.

Of course, the Mets fans took this well.

The man who managed the Mets at the time, Sandy Alderson, wasn’t averse to wetting his finger and seeing how the wind blew on social media. And as he did so, surrounded by a crowd of writers, he smiled.

“With Brandon Nimmo in right field,” he said, “we just didn’t feel like we had a need there.”

It would be nice to think that Alderson knew something no one else did. After all, he was the man who drafted Nimmo in the first round, 13th overall, in 2011, eight months after Alderson took over the team. More likely, Alderson was just being Alderson, quick with a joke and even quicker with a wink.

Up until that point, Nimmo had played exactly 101 games in the major leagues. He had made exactly 250 at-bats. He had impressive numbers, a slash line of .264/.367/.392. He had hit seven home runs. At that point, he wasn’t even the Mets’ most coveted young outfielder, and he and Michael Conforto were not particularly close.

Funny thing though.

Conforto is long gone and has a .240 batting average for the Giants. Stanton’s time with the Yankees was, to put it kindly, doomed. Since 2018, Stanton’s slash line is .244/.326/.485. That’s an OPS of .811 and an OPS-plus of 121.

Nimmo, over the same time period: .268/.380/.453. That’s an OPS of .834 and an OPS-plus of 133. Stanton has more home runs since 2018, 153-95. But it’s hard to seriously debate who was the better player.

Maybe Sandy knew.

To see Nimmo today is to see a player who, at 31, plays with an extraordinary level of confidence. As the Mets won for the 17th time in 26 games since they began a crucial 35-game series against struggling teams, held the Nationals at bay 7-5 and got back to .500 at 45-45, Nimmo opened the evening with a fly to the left outfield in the second inning that kept carrying and carrying until it cleared the wall.

“A hitter’s park home run,” he said, laughing.

He and Francisco Lindor — who also hit a home run on Tuesday — have become a formidable one-two punch at the top of the lineup, and while neither will be heading to Arlington, Texas, for the All-Star Game next week, that may be for the better for the Mets. They’ve been doing a lot of the heavy lifting lately.

“First of all, they’re great players,” Mets manager Carlos Mendoza said. “They’ve been doing this for a long time, and it’s impressive how they control the strike zone, how they affect the baseball when they go the other way. They just see the ball so well.”

That’s fitting. Because recently Nimmo seems to have contributed a major hit every day. The idea that he’s not an All-Star is beyond puzzling. But the Mets know who he is. They know what they have. As recently as May 30, he had a batting average of .209. In the 40 days since, he’s .320/.483/502. Tuesday’s home run was his eighth in 32 games, with 26 RBIs.

“I thought I had a heck of a swing and was pretty surprised when I wasn’t there,” Nimmo admitted after his three RBIs, which added to his team-leading total of 58. “Statistically, I’m usually pretty honest with myself and I’m way up there in a lot of categories that matter.”

He’s won over the Mets already, and Mets fans even before that. They might not have believed Alderson when he teased them seven years ago—who did?—but Nimmo’s smile and obvious joy for the game were infectious from the start. He’s a homegrown player of the best kind. Mets fans have truly grown up with him.

And here’s something to think about: He could be on his way to pushing his name into the top five everyday players in Mets history, a list that currently looks something like this: Mike Piazza, Carlos Beltran, David Wright, Keith Hernandez, Darryl Strawberry. If nothing else, he’ll be a good candidate for the top 10.

He’s still waiting to be named to his first All-Star team, but he’s already got the star part down pat.