The ten-year veteran has the most bWAR of any active MLB player without an All-Star appearance
As Francisco Lindor’s long-awaited All-Star selection gets the celebration it rightfully deserves, it’s time to ask why another Met remains overlooked summer after summer.
Since his debut in 2016, Brandon Nimmo has racked up 25.6 bWAR. That’s the most of any active player without an All-Star appearance, coming in ahead of Willy Adames and J.P. Crawford. It’s also the most of any player in Mets history without an All-Star appearance for the franchise, ahead of Lindor—who will finally lose that distinction on Tuesday—and Mookie Wilson.
So why has the midsummer classic proved so elusive? As the ten-year veteran puts together yet another strong season, let’s look back at his career year by year to try and figure out how the All-Star Game hasn’t found Nimmo yet.
2016-2020
After seeing minimal playing time at the major league level in 2016 and 2017, Nimmo finally broke out in 2018, proving why he was a first-round draft pick and long-time top prospect. In 535 PA, Nimmo put up a 148 OPS+ behind an exceptional 15.0% walk rate and 22 HBP, the latter leading the Majors and setting a franchise record which was soon overtaken by Mark Canha in 2022. For all the ways in which Nimmo has matured as a well-rounded player, 2018 is still arguably his best offensive season to date. The crimp in Nimmo’s All-Star ambitions was quantity, as he didn’t earn an everyday spot in the lineup until early May. It took until May 26, just six days before All-Star fan voting opened, for Nimmo to become a qualified hitter.
Still, by the time the rosters were announced, Nimmo ranked first among National League outfielders with a 149 wRC+, while accruing only 17 plate appearances fewer than starting left fielder Matt Kemp. If he had gotten more playing time in April, or had already become a bigger name in the baseball world (each of the six outfielders selected that year were in at least their sixth MLB season), Nimmo surely would have been en route to Washington alongside Jacob deGrom. Though to be fair, if we’re adjusting for bias against inexperienced players, an additional All-Star spot would be retroactively awarded to a rookie named Juan Soto, who had then recorded a .956 OPS in the first 44 games of his career.
Nimmo battled injury issues in 2019, ultimately missing all of June, July, and August with a bulging disc in his neck. While he took a step back with the bat, slugging .407 compared to .483 the year before, Nimmo started getting regular playing time at center field, representing a major step forward for his potential value to the team.
In the shortened 2020 season, Nimmo had fantastic offensive rate stats, slashing .280/.404/.484 in 55 games. It’s just his luck that 2020 was the first MLB season without an All-Star Game since 1945, when World War II got in the way. But before we blame COVID for robbing Nimmo of All-Star status, it’s worth remembering that the small sample size helped a number of hitters put up monster numbers. Nimmo’s formidable 149 wRC+ was just 10th-best among National League outfielders, with two other Mets — Dominic Smith and Michael Conforto — ranking above him. If anyone got robbed in 2020, it was Smith and Conforto, who each finished on pace for 5+ bWAR in a full regular season. Neither player has come close to matching that level of production since then.
2021-2025
Nimmo got off to a scalding start in 2021, slashing .338/.440/.507 in 22 games while league-wide offensive production was at its lowest since he was a minor leaguer. But injuries soon sidelined Nimmo for two months, causing him to miss most of the first half and stifling his All-Star chances.
On paper, 2022 was Brandon Nimmo’s best all-around year. He stayed healthy for 151 games, put up a 130 OPS+ out of the leadoff spot, and played a plus center field headlined by his dazzling home run robbery of Justin Turner in the Timmy Trumpet game. There were seven N.L. outfielders selected to the 2022 All-Star Game, and at the time the rosters were unveiled on July 10, Nimmo was exactly seventh in both wRC+ and Fangraphs’ Defense among qualified N.L. outfielders. Those numbers put him squarely in contention for a spot, but even once teammate Starling Marte had to back out of the game due to injury, Nimmo was still not selected.
This can partially be attributed to fans’ refusal to penalize non-qualifying players, as Joc Pederson and Ronald Acuña Jr — both with 90+ fewer plate appearances than Nimmo — were voted as starters. Peterson and Acuña’s selection forced no-doubters Juan Soto, Kyle Schwarber, and Ian Happ to the reserve pool, understandably leaving little room for Nimmo. This season, we similarly saw fans elect hometown hero Acuña Jr, who didn’t play a game until May 23, as a starter. If Mets fans had shown Nimmo the same support during his low-quantity, high-quality 2018 season, he may already have an All-Star appearance under his belt.
Nimmo’s All-Star campaign in 2023 looked a lot like 2022, with a .279/.372/.458 slash line by early July that once again barely forced him to the chopping block. In 2024, Nimmo received perhaps his biggest snub yet, missing out on a roster spot despite having the fifth-highest WAR of any N.L. outfielder at the time of selection. One reserve spot went to Padres rookie Jackson Merrill, who played a stellar centerfield defense but had a .745 OPS compared to Nimmo’s .815. Another roster spot went to the Giants’ Heliot Ramos, who had 136 fewer plate appearances than Nimmo but got hot at the right time, hitting eight home runs in the month of June.
This season, there’s no doubt that Nimmo’s numbers sit just below All-Star level. All seven outfielders headed to Atlanta next week outrank Nimmo in OPS, while Nimmo’s defense is no longer helping his case. In 2022, Nimmo ranked in the 90th percentile in Outs Above Average, Statcast’s primary defensive metric; in 2025, Nimmo ranks in the 29th percentile, while making the majority of his starts in left field rather than center. Now in his age-32 season, it’s looking increasingly likely that Nimmo will remain a zero-time All-Star, staying the course as an uber-consistent—though not necessarily elite—Mets cornerstone.
Has Nimmo deserved better? By pure numbers, absolutely. Between 2018 and 2024, there were an average of 44 position players each year selected to the All-Star team once injury replacements were accounted for. Nimmo has been a Top 44 MLB position player by bWAR three times in that span, coming in 28th in 2018, 31st in 2022, and 44th in 2023. If the All-Star designation represented the most valuable players each season, completely irrespective of league, position, and distribution, then Nimmo would have a case as a three-time All-Star. But as we’ve been reminded while watching Francisco Lindor’s Mets career play out—and just last week with Juan Soto’s massive snub—the process favors early-season success, depends on positional depth, and is part-popularity contest.
Perhaps it’s through his loyalty to the orange and blue that Nimmo will eventually get his due. Since the first All-Star Game in 1933, there is just one other player with 25+ career bWAR and no All-Star selections who played their entire career with one franchise: Tim Salmon, a beloved Angel who in 2015 was inducted into the team’s Hall of Fame. Both Salmon and Nimmo debuted at 23 years old, and Nimmo is currently under contract with the Mets through his age-37 season — the exact season which Salmon retired after playing. So if history is any indicator, while he continues to miss out on the midsummer classic, Brandon Nimmo might be destined for a far greater honor when all is said and done.
Or, if he continues to rake, we can all simply vote him in next June.