PHILADELPHIA — After an eventful Sunday, Brandon Nimmo brushed off an injury scare and a potential controversy.
Nimmo was in the middle of a lot of the action in the Mets’ 7-6 loss to the Phillies in Game 2, in which the club lost a game but did not lose an outfielder.
In the ninth inning, Kyle Schwarber lifted a fly ball to shallow left field. Nimmo and Mark Vientos converged in a noisy Citizens Bank Park and could not hear each other.
Vientos caught the ball but inadvertently leveled Nimmo to the grass in the process. A trainer rushed out to left field to check on him.
“I got the air knocked out of me,” Nimmo said in shrugging it off, before shrugging off a curious moment in the seventh inning.
Facing stud righty Orion Kerkering, Nimmo sent a bullet of a home run into the right-field seats.
He appeared to say something to Phillies catcher J.T. Realmuto upon reaching home.
His words “had nothing to do with the home run,” Nimmo said. “I have the utmost respect for Realmuto. He’s one of the most stand-up guys. That was totally misconstrued. That had nothing to do with it.”
Nimmo said there was no ill will with Realmuto or any of his Phillies teammates. Realmuto seemed confused.
“To be honest I don’t know [what Nimmo said],” Realmuto told reporters in the home clubhouse. “He said something about [starter Cristopher] Sanchez, but I don’t know what he was saying.
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“I didn’t say a word.”
Apart from the run-ins, physically with Vientos and less physically with Realmuto, Nimmo played a strong game in which he reached on an infield single and lined out hard a few times.
He did what he could on a day of swings, both in momentum and of the bat, with the Mets tying the game in the top of the ninth on a Vientos blast before falling in the bottom of the ninth on a Nick Castellanos walk-off single.
“I’m absolutely drained right now,” Nimmo said. “You go through an emotional roller coaster. Just mentally and emotionally being into every pitch and every pitch mattering so much.
“It does mentally drain you, but you’re so into it you don’t really realize it until you come down.”
