Nimmo still has shot to fulfill draft promise

Drafting Brandon Nimmo was one of Sandy Alderson’s first moves as the Mets general manager, and it raised plenty of eyebrows at the time.

Nimmo is from Wyoming, one of three states that doesn’t have high school baseball, so the outfielder instead played on the local American Legion team.

With the pick, Alderson — and then-vice president of player development Paul DePodesta — bypassed selecting what others would have deemed a safer pick in a college pitcher such as Sonny Gray or college infielders like Kolten Wong and Joe Panik, all selected later in the first round of that 2011 draft (as was high schooler Jose Fernandez, one after Nimmo).

“When we went into this, to be quite frank with you, we weren’t that interested in making what we thought was making the safest pick,” DePodesta said at the time, explaining the organization was in the early stages of rebuilding. “We were interested in making the pick that we thought had the most impact.”

Nine years later, how does that pick look?

Obviously, Fernandez was the best of the bunch before he was killed in a boating accident in 2016.

Gray has pitched well for most of his seven-year career, outside of his time with the Yankees, and Wong has been a consistent performer over the same period for the Cardinals. Panik was an All-Star for San Francisco, but had fallen off before the Mets picked him up last season.

Nimmo’s career, not surprisingly, took longer to get going — largely due to his inexperience.

He made his major league debut in 2016 — called up to replace a slumping Michael Conforto — and dealt with injuries the following season, but finished well.

Nimmo broke through in 2018, finishing with an OPS of .886 in

535 plate appearances.

Instead of building on that last year, though, Nimmo was sidetracked by a bulging disk in his neck he suffered crashing into a wall in April. After trying to play through what was thought to be a stiff neck, Nimmo was shut down in May, when he was hitting just .200 with a .667 OPS.

But when Nimmo returned in September after missing 89 games, he again showed the potential the Mets saw in him nearly a decade ago. He had a .995 OPS over the final month of the regular season, and the Mets were hoping for more of that from Nimmo when spring training was shut down in March. “He’s shown flashes,’’ one NL scout said. “He’s a productive offensive player who still has room to get better, so you can understand why the Mets liked him then and why they still do.’’

“It wasn’t even the numbers he put up at the end of the year,” hitting coach Chili Davis said in February. “It was his approach and his movement in the batter’s box was so nice, so I wanted to make sure he didn’t change this because it was working for him and that’s the thing I want to see him perfect.’’

Nimmo had similar goals.

“The biggest thing is consistency,’’ Nimmo said during the spring. “I want to try to be more consistent throughout the season with my approach with both my swings and my defense.”

He dealt with a brief scare this spring when he was forced to undergo a series of cardiological exams that showed an irregular heartbeat. He returned to action just a few days later and was slated to share time in center with Jake Marisnick. Nimmo had also seen time in right field during the Grapefruit League when Conforto was out with a strained oblique. Wherever he plays, if he’s able to stay healthy, the Mets’ new regime can find out for certain just what Alderson and Co. got when they took a chance on Nimmo.

“I know there’s gonna be peaks and valleys during the season, so I try to focus on the process,’’ Nimmo said. “If I feel good, I believe I can put together an entire year, but I have to do it.”

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