PORT ST. LUCIE — Despite the plantar fasciitis and the sore knee that required an injection, Brandon Nimmo made it through spring training and is feeling good ahead of the 2025 season. However, Nimmo, who will be 32 on Opening Day, knows that with the mileage on his body in his 30s, it’s unrealistic to think he won’t have to play through some aches and pains.
At this point in his career, injury management is as important as prevention, and Nimmo is extremely diligent with it.
“It’s going to be constant maintenance,” Nimmo told the Daily News on Monday at Clover Park. “But that’s kind of just the way the season goes now, and that’s the way I’ve been treating it for the last 3-4 now. There are going to be little things that pop up along the way, there’s no question about it, but for right now, you know, everything is maintenance.”
The Mets have worked to change the culture in their training room over the last half-decade. Players are encouraged to come to the trainers when they feel something is wrong, even if that something seems minor at the time. This hasn’t always been the case with the Mets, and in professional sports in general, where playing through injuries is expected.
Nimmo did play hurt last season, playing through plantar fasciitis on and off. He managed it with treatment and scheduled days off, but it was clear he was playing through pain during the NLCS. He even joked about it with Los Angeles Dodgers first baseman Freddie Freeman, who was hobbled by an ankle injury during the playoffs.
The regular season, however, is different.
“You have to constantly watch your workload,” Nimmo said. “You’ve got to measure everything that you’re about to do and decide whether it’s worth the squeeze or not, because you really only have so many bullets in a day, and you really only have so many bullets in a career or in a lifetime.”
The Mets have ways to track energy expenditure and other health metrics. Nimmo trusts the training staff and the information given to him by them. After being tagged as injury-prone earlier in his career, Nimmo has now played in at least 150 games in each of the past three seasons, crediting the plan the trainers put together for him.
He has DH days to get him off of his feet, he adjusts his strength and conditioning plans accordingly each week and he doesn’t force anything that isn’t there on the basepaths. He isn’t running just to try to steal a base, he’s taking cues from first base coach Antoan Richardson when a swipe is in sight, or taking an extra base if the opportunity presents itself.
The plan continues to work, so he’ll continue to trust the training staff.
“It’s important for me to be out on the field, so it’s understanding those things and getting a little bit wiser and more mature with the games and everything to understand the situations,” Nimmo said. “I’ll pull on all of that in order to try and have another healthy year this year.”
NEWLY MINTED
Left-hander A.J. Minter made his fifth Grapefruit League appearance Monday in a 6-6 tie with the Yankees, pitching for the third time in a week. It was a benchmark he needed to hit in order for the Mets to be comfortable including him on the Opening Day roster.
After undergoing hip surgery last August while with the Atlanta Braves, Minter wasn’t sure he would be ready for the start of the season, himself 60-40 odds. Minter and the Mets both agreed that an injured list stint in March and April would be better than one late in the season.
Right-handers Max Kranick and Huascar Brazobán are still in contention for a bullpen spot as well, but the Mets are still factoring Minter’s health into their decision making process, and would like to see how he feels over the next few days.
“My goal the whole offseason was to be ready for Opening Day,” Minter said. “I didn’t think it was going to come down to literally today, the last day to make that decision because you never want to go into the season just not feeling confident, for sure. But also, just not trying to back and get injured…
“I think I kind of shocked myself, but also I knew how hard I worked this off-season to make sure it was ready.”
The Mets will make final roster decisions after working out Wednesday in Houston.
RECORD SCRATCH
The Mets set a new attendance record this spring, seeing 106,027 fans come through Clover Park, the most since the team moved to Port St. Lucie in 1988. Monday’s attendance total of 8,088 for a Subway Series exhibition game was the second-most ever for a single game, and the most since 2015, when the 8,175 fans were on hand for a Yankees-Mets spring matchup.
