ARLINGTON, Texas — Brandon Nimmo said before his first game against the New York Mets on Tuesday that a season with the Texas Rangers has shown him how different it is to play in New York.
Nimmo spoke in a pregame interview with SNY, the Mets’ television home, which SNY posted shortly before first pitch at Globe Life Field. The Mets traded him to Texas last November for second baseman Marcus Semien after he spent his first 10 major league seasons in New York.
Nimmo came up through the Mets’ minor league system. At every trade deadline, he said, at least one of the players who came over in a trade would ask him whether New York was like that all the time, and he never had an answer for them because he didn’t know anything different.
“For sure. 100%. And nothing against you guys. I love you guys. I’ve had a great relationship. But this is completely different,” Nimmo said. “How much is looked into every single day and the exposure of every single day rather than kind of taking things in stride from month to month. It’s like, did you do it today or did you not, and you have to own up to that. And that’s something that I learned really early on, way back in Brooklyn.”
“And so I grew up in the system and I figured it out really early on, but when you come from other places and you go into it, it’s completely different,” Nimmo continued. “And I learned that from hearing it every single year when we would do trade deadline and somebody would come over, and at least one of the people out of every single one of those trades would go, ‘Is this really what it’s like here all the time?’ And I’m like, I don’t really know, because I don’t know any different. Now I do know different, and it is completely different, playing in another market than New York.”
“But I also tell them that it’s two-fold, like, you do really well there, and it’s awesome, it’s great to do really well there. So, like, it’s a two-way, double-edged sword,” Nimmo added. “If you do poorly, just be ready to own up to it and admit that you did poorly. But if you do great, and that team, because I got to be a part of that, like, it’s a lot of fun. And it’s a great place to succeed. But it is different.”
Brandon Nimmo Spent First 1,066 Games Of Career With New York Mets
The Mets drafted Nimmo 13th overall in 2011. He spent the 2012 season with the Brooklyn Cyclones of the New York-Penn League and made his major league debut with the Mets on June 26, 2016.
Nimmo played the first 1,066 games of his major league career for New York. Before this season, he had played three games in Arlington, all in a June 2024 series in which he went 5-for-12 with 2 home runs and 5 RBIs. He reached 10 years of major league service time in August.
Nimmo has also been talking with the Dallas-Fort Worth media this season about travel. The Mets play in the NL East, and the Rangers play in the AL West.
“I will even say even I didn’t realize, and I’ve been talking to our media about this as well, I didn’t realize how easy travel was being in the middle of the country compared to the Northeast,” Nimmo continued. “Doing the West Coast trips three times, and wearing that six-hour flight and the time changes and getting back. And you’re 7 a.m. and you’re getting into traffic and it takes you another two hours to get home. Over the course of a 162, these things wear on you. And I didn’t know any different.”
“But I will say that these things, they add up, and playing in New York is a different animal, and it’s good. It’s a really great thing, and I think that the New York market is awesome and it’s a great place to win, and I developed great relationships there,” Nimmo noted. “But it is not for everyone, that is for sure. There are some people that it’s a lot, and it’s hard to deal with every day.”
Texas Rangers Tied With Houston Astros With Five Games Left
The Mets won Tuesday’s series opener 6-3. Nimmo went 2-for-4 with a run scored and was charged with an error in right field that allowed a run to score in the fourth inning. Semien went 0-for-5 with a run scored. Nimmo told SNY on Wednesday that the first inning of the game felt weird, and he compared his exit from the Mets to a marriage in which one partner wants to move on.
Entering Tuesday, Nimmo was hitting .260/.325/.407 with 14 home runs, 61 RBIs, and 34 doubles in 149 games, and his 148 hits led the Rangers.
The loss dropped Texas to 78-79. The Houston Astros beat the Mariners 7-0 in Seattle later Tuesday night and pulled back into a tie with the Rangers for first place in the AL West. Each team has five games left, and Houston holds the tiebreaker after going 9-4 against Texas this season.
The Rangers and Mets play Wednesday at 7:05 p.m. CT at Globe Life Field, with right-hander Nolan McLean (11-10, 3.18 ERA) scheduled to start for New York. The series ends Thursday at 1:35 p.m. CT, and Texas closes the regular season with three games at the Minnesota Twins beginning Sept. 25.
