New York Mets veteran left fielder Brandon Nimmo’s neck injury is not considered serious, as manager Carlos Mendoza deemed him day-to-day following their 5-4 loss to the Washington Nationals on Wednesday night.
The team is labeling it as neck stiffness, which forced him out in the second inning after grounding into a first-inning-ending double play. He was replaced by Starling Marte.
“Sometimes, depending on how serious it is, I can kind of tough it out and play through it,” Nimmo said. “But this one was affecting the swing and me running. I wasn’t able to do what I wanted on defense, either. I wasn’t able to look up… So we decided to go ahead and get out of there.”
Nimmo, who added that “it just takes a few days to get out,” encountered the issue when he woke up on Wednesday morning, rather than any in-game action prompting the injury.
“He didn’t think much of it, but it just didn’t get better,” Mendoza said. “As he was ramping up to get ready for the game, it continued to get worse. He was like, ‘I’m going to try it.’ And then after the first at-bat and playing the outfield, it got to a point where he couldn’t do it.”
This is something that has plagued Nimmo since 2019, after a collision with the outfield wall. He left a late-May matchup with the Los Angeles Dodgers early because of it, too.
Judging by the track record, Friday is believed to be the earliest that he’ll be back in the lineup.
“It’s usually 24-to-48 hours, we’ll see what we’ve got [Thursday],” Mendoza said.
