Brandon Nimmo on hitting at Citi Field: ‘I just try to stay sane'

New York Times

29-05-2025

NEW YORK — Brandon Nimmo scrolls through the photos on his phone, through row after row of his infant daughter, to two screenshots he took side by side earlier this year — the purest evidence, in his mind, of what it's like to hit baseballs at Citi Field.
The first is a home run Nimmo hit late last June off Houston's Bryan Abreu — one he struck at 103.5 mph with a 23-degree launch angle that traveled 412 feet to left-center. The second is a long out Nimmo hit in early April this season against Miami's Max Meyer — one he struck at 104 mph with a 27-degree launch angle that traveled 332 feet to left-center.
Source: MLB.com
Nimmo could not get over the 80-foot gap between the two balls in play. So he went to Joe Lefkowitz, the Mets' senior manager of baseball analytics integration, and asked: How much could the temperature play a part? It didn't feel windy that day, but could the wind have knocked it down that much? What about spin?
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Lefkowitz guessed that maybe those variables could explain about 12 feet of difference in the ball's flight.
Six weeks later, Nimmo's incredulity has not abated.
'That's 68 feet of unknown,' he said. 'How is there 68 feet? I could get 10 feet, but 68?'
This is life for a hitter at Citi Field.
No, 'It's hard to hit at one of the sport's most pitcher-friendly parks' is not a newsflash. Baseball Savant's current park factors grade Citi Field as the second-hardest park for base hits (ahead only of Seattle's T-Mobile Park) and tied for the fourth-hardest park for offense overall.
The experience of the longest-tenured Met reflects what it's like to live in that reality, year after year, at-bat after at-bat.
'I've just accepted it: Citi Field in April and May is really difficult to hit in,' Nimmo said. 'There is no changing it.'
In all but one full season of his career, Nimmo has hit better on the road than at home. In several of those years, the gap has been relatively vast — a seismic chasm of 210 points of OPS in 2022 and differences of 51 and 75 points in each of the last two seasons. This year, it's happening again: His OPS on the road is 157 points higher than at home after he reached base four times on Wednesday against the White Sox.
Nimmo is right in pointing to April and May as the primary drivers of his home and road splits.
That's been even more extreme since the start of the 2022 season.
Nimmo explains it like this.
'There's nothing you can really do about it except raise your top-end exit velocity, and I've already maxed mine out,' he said. 'You have to be an anomaly. You have to be one of those guys where you're Pete Alonso, Aaron Judge, Oneil Cruz.
'If you're really good at hitting home runs, you'd clip like 30 in the course of 700 plate appearances. If five of those are taken away in April and May, it's not like you're going to recover those. That's one of your 30 bullets.'
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In 2023, Nimmo tried using a heavier bat early in the season to increase his exit velo, hoping it would help him combat Citi Field's challenges. However, he felt the heavier bat was forcing him to make swing decisions too early and compromising his overall approach.
Nimmo's splits have become more extreme since he fundamentally changed who he was as a hitter a few years back. That's when he started selling out more in the search for power, which has been rewarded far more on the road than at home. Since the start of 2022, Nimmo's hit about 60 percent of his home runs on the road (42 to 29 at home).
'Early in my career, I would usually have better numbers than my expected (metrics), and now later I have worse numbers than my expected. But you're still seeing the jump in home runs and power and doubles, so it's a tradeoff,' Nimmo said. 'Groundballs, you can sometimes have a higher average on, but you don't have nearly as much slug. That was part of why I had more even splits in the beginning.'
Could Nimmo use his old approach at home and his new one on the road?
'We can't have a swing on the road and a swing at home. It's hard enough to have one swing,' co-hitting coach Jeremy Barnes said. 'His process isn't any different.'
As a veteran in the clubhouse, Nimmo views it as his responsibility to keep others' heads up early in the season. He noted a ball Brett Baty had hit to the track last homestand that would have been a home run later in the season.
'I just told him, 'Dude, there's nothing else you can do. Just stay there,'' Nimmo said. 'I know it sucks. It's just the way it is. You have to find a way to spin it positive so you don't drive yourself nuts with it.'
The way to spin it positively right now? There's one more series at home before the calendar turns to June. Nimmo is pumped.
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'I just try to stay sane through April and May and maybe some things will bounce your way, maybe they won't, and then just look toward the summer,' he said. 'It is frustrating. It's just the way it is. You can't look at the results too much and you have to focus on the process. This looks pretty good, so I need to stay on that track and trust that when I'm on the road or when things warm up, it will turn around.'