Brandon Nimmo entered the Mets' series with the San Diego Padres this past weekend struggling amid one of his worst seasons at the plate as a professional.
Nimmo, who puts a lot of thought into the science of hitting, was harsh on himself, calling his struggles – .215 average and .708 OPS to that point – "terrible" and "unacceptable."
Manager Carlos Mendoza said Nimmo was "off" and pointed to the outfielder’s timing being out of whack at the plate.
In the four games since, Nimmo has seven RBI while going 10-for-17 at the plate with a pair of extra-base hits, including a two-run home run in Monday night's 14-2 shellacking of the Texas Rangers.
As a result, the 31-year-old has seen his average go up to .240 and OPS to .756.
Nimmo said the biggest change has been cutting down on his swings and misses – which were 26.1 percent, the highest in his last five seasons entering Friday's game – and working on making small adjustments in the batting cage with hitting coaches Eric Chavez and Jeremy Barnes.
"We’ve been trying to work on little things each day and you’ve been seeing them leak into the games and it’s been producing much better results," he told SNY’s Steve Gelbs. "We just had to clean up the swing and miss and there were some bad habits that got into my swing.
"It happens throughout the course of the season. You’re gonna have little things that happen to your body here and there and then you end up developing a bad habit and you have to overcome it."
Nimmo said the period of struggles was rough, but the nine-year veteran had the experience to know ups and downs are part of the game.
"I expect more of myself," he added, "but fortunately I’ve got a great support system around me and they believed in me and we put a lot of work in."
Does that support system include Grimace, the purple monster who threw out the first pitch before the game that started the Mets’ six-game winning streak?
"I don’t know about coincidences," Nimmo said, after letting out a huge laugh at Gelbs’ question. "He definitely correlates with us going on this run, if that’s what you want to attribute it to, then I’m all for it.
"Whatever it is, let’s keep it going. I’m all for it."
Nimmo said the need to stay loose and have fun was a topic during the Mets’ team meeting a few weeks ago.
"We need to come out here, we need to have fun, we need to be accountable to each other, but first and foremost we all grew up with this being a kid’s game. I think that’s a lot of fun adding Grimace to this. So I’m all for it."
He added: "We can ride that wave as long as we want, as long as we keep winning, that’s fine by me."