Brandon Nimmo Ate Undercooked Chicken, Was Up All Night Barfing

Brandon Nimmo was not scheduled to play Wednesday for the Mets in early Grapefruit League action, but he was excused from showing up for work due to what was initially reported to be a “ stomach bug.” Speaking after the Mets’ 14-6 win over the Marlins, manager Mickey Callaway clarified that Nimmo’s ailment was less a stomach bug and more a case of “dude ate some undercooked chicken that he had prepared for himself and subsequently stayed up all night barfing.”

Even by the effectively nonexistent standards of urgency and import that apply to February Baseball News, this is not especially urgent or important stuff—except for one aspect. Nimmo will be fine. He is just 25 years old and there are a great many people that age who don’t know how to do things like “cook chicken such that it will not make you barf for hours on end” or “make decisions” or “virtually anything at all.” There are legal adults that age who have driver’s licenses, pay monthly bills, hold down jobs, and in some cases even do laundry who can nevertheless not be trusted to use a George Foreman grill in a way that isn’t a danger to themselves and their neighbors. This profound but mostly benign incompetence is something that people grow out of, except of course in the cases in which they literally poison themselves to death with medium-rare chicken first. Given how quickly he went from a cold-weather prospect to a viable major league contributor, there is no reason to think that Brandon Nimmo might not, at some point in the future, successfully prepare a piece of chicken or even fish.

That is, there is no reason to think that unless the Mets actually follow through on their threat to try to “teach him how to cook..” It’s hard to imagine what this might involve—I’ve tried, and basically my mind stalls out on an image of Mr. Met in a chef’s toque grinning with what increasingly seems like menace—but there is no reason to believe that this particular organization can be trusted to teach Nimmo or anyone else how to do something like this.

Thankfully, the Mets almost never do what they say they’re going to do. If they depart from that in this case, and do indeed follow through on their threat to teach Brandon Nimmo to cook, none of us—least of all Nimmo himself—will be safe.

Update (Feb. 27, 10:09 a.m. ET): Brandon, buddy.

Buddy.

Hang in there dude.