The MLB finished giving out its regular season awards for 2023, and one New York Mets player came away empty-handed. Was it warranted?
Mets: Was Nimmo’s Lack of Award Consideration Fair?
Outfielder Brandon Nimmo did not garner any honors for his performance this past season, leaving Anthony Castrovince of MLB.com with reason to credit him after the fact in his “The Best Players in ’23 Without Any Awards” piece.
Nimmo ranked tenth among all National League outfielders with 89 runs scored and supplemented that with 24 homers behind a .278/.363/.466 slash line. Nimmo put together a strong offensive showing yet was not nominated for the Silver Slugger award.
On defense, Nimmo sported a .988 fielding percentage in 136 games in center field. He also set a career-high with 352 putouts during the year. However, Nimmo was not named a finalist for the Gold Glove award among center fielders in the National League but lost favor to Brenton Doyle (Colorado Rockies), Michael Harris II (Atlanta Braves), and Alek Thomas (Arizona Diamondbacks).
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Are there Underlying Factors That Have Kept Nimmo From Earning an Award in His Career?
Surprisingly, Nimmo did not see his name pop up as a nominee for either of the two All-MLB teams that were recently named this past Saturday, Dec. 16.
Part of the reason why Nimmo may have gotten the short end of the stick with voters may have been because of the stark dropoff the Mets saw in wins. While regular season awards are heavily predicated around individual performances, Nimmo’s numbers, while up there with many of the better outfielders in baseball, were not enough to add to his trophy case.
Nimmo, 30, has yet to earn any regular season awards in his seven-year tenure in the majors. Though he led the NL in triples a year ago and followed that up with a strong outing this past go-round, he’ll have to deliver an even better season in 2024 to make that a thing of the past.