Brandon Nimmo of the New York Mets will want that one back, even if he doesn't want to admit it. Nimmo should've made a catch in the outfield for the Mets second out of the inning. Yet, that Freddie Freeman magic got the best of him, as Nimmo miscalculated the trajectory of the baseball, which landed right next to him. The Dodgers won in the bottom of the ninth. If Freeman was the hero, Nimmo was almost certainly the zero.
“It just did what I didn’t think it was going to do there at the end,” Nimmo said of the baseball. “I didn’t think it had enough time to move that much.”
Nimmo turned the wrong way to start the play and never quite recovered. It happened in the worst possible moment for the Mets, but Nimmo has brought so much to this team over the years. Surely, Mets fans will understand as long as Nimmo takes accountability.
“I had a read on it,” Nimmo said. “In fact, as long as it was staying in the park, I thought I was going to make a play on it.”
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Brandon Nimmo makes excuses for gifting Dodgers a victory
However, it's Nimmo's first quote that got most of the attention. Freeman admitted he thought the ball was ought of the park at the crack of the bat. It was Nimmo – assuming he thought it was going to stay in the park, which he said – who now claims he didn't have enough time? Freeman's fly ball was far from a line drive.
Mets manager Carlos Mendoza came to Nimmo's defense, ensuring that the play wasn't as easy as it looked on live television.
“That ball slicing from a lefty, not an easy play,” Mendoza said. “Because of where he’s at positioning-wise, it’s not as routine as it looked.”
To hear Nimmo insult Mets fans' intelligence is one thing, but for Mendoza to back it up is another. Managers often go to bat for their players. The same can be said in this instance, as the Mets will need Nimmo confident for the final two games of their four-game set in LA. Nimmo himself has been impressed with the atmosphere.
“It’s been playoff-type atmosphere,” Nimmo said. “Dodger Stadium’s been rocking. It’s been a lot of fun. So it’s unfortunate when a game like that ends on a play like that, because it’s been so good and such high intensity and good baseball. But that’s the way it goes sometimes.”
Typically that is not how it goes for a sound defensive outfielder.