WASHINGTON (AP) — Brandon Nimmo got a chance to go over his breakout performance with New York Mets first base coach Antoan Richardson.
With a grand slam and nine RBIs on the day, there was a lot to talk about.
Click to Gallery
New York Mets' Brandon Nimmo (9) gestures after hitting a three-run home run off Washington Nationals pitcher Colin Poche (not shown) which also scored Mark Vientos (27) and Jesse Winker, top right, during the sixth inning of a baseball game in Washington, Monday, April 28, 2025. (AP Photo/Terrance Williams)
New York Mets' Brandon Nimmo gestures after hitting a grand slam off Washington Nationals pitcher Cole Henry during the seventh inning of a baseball game in Washington, Monday, April 28, 2025. (AP Photo/Terrance Williams)
New York Mets' Brandon Nimmo runs the bases after hitting a three-run home run off Washington Nationals pitcher Colin Poche during the sixth inning of a baseball game in Washington, Monday, April 28, 2025. (AP Photo/Terrance Williams)
New York Mets' Brandon Nimmo (9) scores on a sacrifice fly hit by Jeff McNeil off Washington Nationals pitcher Trevor Williams (not shown) during the second inning of a baseball game in Washington, Monday, April 28, 2025. (AP Photo/Terrance Williams)
“He’s like ‘Well, nine ribbies, that’s got to be a career high, right?’” Nimmo said. “And I was like ‘Yeah, that definitely is.’ I didn’t know it tied (a) franchise record, but I did know how many RBIs I had. I think before this my career high was five and that was an amazing day as well. These days don’t come around that often and you kind of sit back and enjoy it.”
Nimmo's performance powered the Mets to a 19-5 victory over the Washington Nationals. He equaled the franchise record for RBIs set by Carlos Delgado in the first game of a doubleheader against the New York Yankees on June 27, 2008.
The 32-year-old outfielder hit a three-run homer in the sixth inning and his second career slam in the seventh. He also doubled home two runs in the eighth.
He became the third player with nine or more RBIs in a three-inning span within a game since RBI became an official statistic in 1920, according to the Elias Sports Bureau. He joined Iván Rodríguez in the first three innings on April 13, 1999, and Sammy Sosa in the third through fifth innings on Aug. 20, 2002.
Nimmo finished with four hits in his seventh career multihomer game, raising his batting average from .192 to .218. He hit .149 (7 for 47) with no extra-base hits in his previous 12 games.
“He’s a really good player,” Mets manager Carlos Mendoza said. “He’s a good hitter. At some point, you know those guys are going to come out of it. It’s part of a big league season where at times it’s going to be hard. And then you’ll see games like this. Hopefully, we’ll start seeing the Nimmo we all know.”
Nimmo’s previous career high was five RBIs at Atlanta on April 8, 2024.
He went deep four times in his first 14 games this year, but he had struggled to produce since then. He had his first multihit game since April 13 in Friday’s series opener, then followed it up with back-to-back 0-for-4 performances.
“I’ve been hitting the ball harder lately, and that’s usually a good sign,” Nimmo said. “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire, usually. Just trying to stay with it and keep trusting that it would come along.”
Nimmo's sixth-inning homer off reliever Colin Poche bumped New York’s lead to 6-0, and his grand slam off Cole Henry made it 11-0. His two-run double against Eduardo Salazar extended New York’s advantage to 13-0.
Nimmo got another plate appearance in the ninth, but he grounded out right after Mark Vientos homered off infielder Amed Rosario.
“I was thinking ‘Man, it would be really cool to get double-digit RBIs in a day’ when I was coming up before Swaggy hit the three-run homer,” Nimmo said.
“Was not able to get over the top of that. But hey, it’s still really awesome to me all the same to be able to be in Mets history like that.”
AP MLB: https://apnews.com/hub/mlb
New York Mets' Brandon Nimmo (9) gestures after hitting a three-run home run off Washington Nationals pitcher Colin Poche (not shown) which also scored Mark Vientos (27) and Jesse Winker, top right, during the sixth inning of a baseball game in Washington, Monday, April 28, 2025. (AP Photo/Terrance Williams)
New York Mets' Brandon Nimmo gestures after hitting a grand slam off Washington Nationals pitcher Cole Henry during the seventh inning of a baseball game in Washington, Monday, April 28, 2025. (AP Photo/Terrance Williams)
New York Mets' Brandon Nimmo runs the bases after hitting a three-run home run off Washington Nationals pitcher Colin Poche during the sixth inning of a baseball game in Washington, Monday, April 28, 2025. (AP Photo/Terrance Williams)
New York Mets' Brandon Nimmo (9) scores on a sacrifice fly hit by Jeff McNeil off Washington Nationals pitcher Trevor Williams (not shown) during the second inning of a baseball game in Washington, Monday, April 28, 2025. (AP Photo/Terrance Williams)
WASHINGTON (AP) — Sluggish December hiring concluded a year of weak employment gains that have frustrated job seekers even though layoffs and unemployment have remained low.
Employers added just 50,000 jobs last month, nearly unchanged from a downwardly revised figure of 56,000 in November, the Labor Department said Friday. The unemployment rate slipped to 4.4%, its first decline since June, from 4.5% in November, a figure also revised lower.
The data suggests that businesses are reluctant to add workers even as economic growth has picked up. Many companies hired aggressively after the pandemic and no longer need to fill more jobs. Others have held back due to widespread uncertainty caused by President Donald Trump’s shifting tariff policie s, elevated inflation, and the spread of artificial intelligence, which could alter or even replace some jobs.
Still, economists were encouraged by the drop in the unemployment rate, which had risen in the previous four straight reports. It had also alarmed officials at the Federal Reserve, prompting three cuts to the central bank's key interest rate last year. The decline lowered the odds of another cut in January, economists said.
The job market “is not doing so badly after all,” Stephen Brown, an economist at Capital Economics, a consulting firm, wrote. “The Fed will be in no rush to resume interest rate cuts.”
November's job gain was revised slightly lower, from 64,000 to 56,000, while October's now shows a much steeper drop, with a loss of 173,000 positions, down from previous estimates of a 105,000 decline. The government revises the jobs figures as it receives more survey responses from businesses.
Nearly all the jobs added in December were in the health care and restaurant and hotel industries. Health care added 38,500 jobs, while restaurants and hotels gained 47,000. Governments — mostly at the state and local level — added 13,000.
Manufacturing, construction and retail companies all shed jobs. Retailers cut 25,000 positions, a sign that winter holiday hiring has been weaker than previous years.
With an aging population and a sharp drop in immigration, the economy doesn't need to create as many jobs as it has in the past to keep the unemployment rate steady. As a result, a gain of 50,000 jobs is not as clear a sign of weakness as it would have been in previous years.
The jobs data are being closely watched on Wall Street and in Washington because they are the first clean readings on the labor market in three months. The government didn’t issue a report in October because of the six-week government shutdown, and November’s data was distorted by the closure, which lasted until Nov. 12.
Still, December’s report caps a year of sluggish hiring, particularly after “liberation day” in April when President Donald Trump imposed sweeping tariffs on dozens of countries, though many were later delayed or softened. The economy generated an average of 111,000 jobs a month in the first three months of 2025. But that pace dropped to just 11,000 in the three months ended in August, before rebounding slightly to 22,000 in November.
Subdued hiring underscores a key conundrum surrounding the economy as it enters 2026: Growth has picked up to healthy levels, yet hiring has weakened noticeably and the unemployment rate has increased in the last four jobs reports.
Last year, the economy gained just 584,000 jobs, sharply lower than that more than 2 million added in 2024. It's the smallest annual gain since the COVID-19 pandemic decimated the job market in 2020.
Most economists expect hiring will accelerate this year as growth remains solid, and President Donald Trump's tax cut legislation is expected to produce large tax refunds this spring. Yet they acknowledge there are other possibilities: Weak job gains could drag down future growth. Or the economy could keep expanding at a healthy clip, while automation and the spread of artificial intelligence reduces the need for more jobs.
Even the weak 2025 figures are likely to be revised lower in February, when the government completes an annual benchmarking of the jobs figures to an actual count of jobs derived from companies' unemployment insurance filings. A preliminary estimate of that revision showed it could reduce total jobs as of March 2025 by 911,000.
And last month, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said that the government could still be overstating job gains by about 60,000 a month because of shortcomings in how it accounts for new companies as well as those that have gone out of business. The Labor Department is expected to update those methods in its report next month.
With hiring so weak, the Federal Reserve cut its key short-term interest rate three times late last year, in an effort to boost borrowing, spending, and hiring. Yet Powell signaled that the central bank may keep its rate unchanged in the coming months as it evaluates how the economy evolves.
Even with such sluggish job gains, the economy has continued to expand, with growth reaching a 4.3% annual rate in last year's July-September quarter, the best in two years. Strong consumer spending helped drive the gain. The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta forecasts that growth could slow to a still-solid 2.7% in the final three months of last year.
At the same time, inflation remains elevated, eroding the value of Americans’ paychecks. Consumer prices rose 2.7% in November compared with a year ago, little changed from the beginning of the year and above the Fed’s 2% target.
FILE - A hiring sign is displayed at a grocery store in Northbrook, Ill., Tuesday, Jan. 21, 2025. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh)
