ATLANTA — Brandon Nimmo runs. All the time. Famously. His hustling has grow to be an identifiable quirk, nearly the one participant in baseball who costs to first base after a stroll.
Which made Monday’s prime of the eighth inning of the opener all of the extra beautiful. The swing was highly effective, however so was the admiration.
Nimmo, one of many membership’s leaders and one of many extra throwback gamers within the sport, helped energy the Mets into the postseason — with some assist in the ninth inning, because it turned out — and powered his dugout into delirium with a two-run dwelling run within the 8-7, playoff-clinching win over the Braves at Truist Park within the first sport of the regular-season-ending doubleheader.
What can be remembered most can be Francisco Lindor’s go-ahead, two-run homer. Edwin Diaz’s eighth-inning implosion, between-inning plea to supervisor Carlos Mendoza and ninth-inning survival can be memorable. However the Mets wouldn’t have escaped and punched their ticket with out the final blow of the highest of the eighth, throughout which Nimmo reworked.
After seven silent innings in opposition to Spencer Schwellenbach, the Mets lastly awoke. Tyrone Taylor’s double knocked the Braves starter from the sport and commenced a stretch of 5 consecutive hits. Francisco Alvarez’s double supplied the primary Mets run. Lindor’s single scored one other. Jose Iglesias’ hit tied the sport at 3-3 earlier than Mark Vientos’ sacrifice fly gave the Mets their first lead of the sport.
Nimmo then supplied a cushion that will show crucial.
The fourth pitch he noticed from Raisel Iglesias was a middle-of-the-plate fastball that Nimmo was ready for. He turned on it and watched it go. He dropped his bat. He took 9 steps, strolling his option to first base whereas gazing on the trajectory of a 405-foot bomb that reached the Chop Home in proper discipline.
“It’s an enormous second,” Nimmo mentioned with a smile after the Mets and Braves break up the doubleheader and each groups launched champagne-spraying celebrations. “I knew it once I hit it. I knew it was gone. No disrespect to Iglesias. Simply an enormous second.”
These 9 steps included a look at a dugout whose roof had been blown off.
“They had been all howling and leaping previous the dugout,” Nimmo mentioned. “It was simply euphoria coming over you.”
The 6-3 lead that the Mets held wouldn’t final, however the picture of the dugout will. Lindor, dangerous again and all, leapt the dugout railing and onto the sphere to steer the cheering.
“I had no thought I used to be going to do this,” Lindor mentioned after the Sport 1 victory. “I jumped by some means, someway. My again positively feels a lot better if I’m leaping over the fence.”
