Longtime Met Brandon Nimmo is now a Texas Ranger. (Photo by Terence Lewis/Icon Sportswire)

PHILADELPHIA — Brandon Nimmo’s days as a Phillie killer aren’t quite over.

Nimmo, an outfielder for the New York Mets from 2016 to 2025, is now a Texas Ranger after a surprising offseason trade that sent Marcus Semien to New York. It was a rare big contract for big contract deal and it’s already paying dividends for Texas.

Nimmo fittingly made his Rangers debut in a place he is very familiar with. In three games against the Phillies over the weekend, the left-handed hitting Nimmo went 4-for-12 with a two-run home run off Jesús Luzardo. Nimmo is one of the rare left-handed hitters with past success against Luzardo; he’s now 7-for-23 with three extra-base hits lifetime against Luzardo.

“He is tough. He is a great pitcher,” Nimmo said postgame on Sunday. “There’s a reason he got the extension. There’s a reason they want to keep him here in Philadelphia. What we did today was against a very, very good pitcher.”

Nimmo now has 11 career home runs at Citizens Bank Park, the most he has in a visiting stadium in his career. He is a lifetime .276 hitter with a .401 on-base percentage at CBP. He has ran, not walked, to first base in Philadelphia after ball four 42 times in his career. Each time he throws the bat and hustles down the line, he hears the boos.

“The Philly killer,” Nimmo laughed as he took questions after Sunday’s game in the visiting clubhouse at the same locker he used as a New York Met last year.

It came with the territory of being a Met, but there was more disdain in Philadelphia for Nimmo, who played hard with a smile and was always a tough out. A “dork” might be the word some Phillies fans used to describe him. He was booed loudly during pregame introductions on Opening Day. Some took exception to Nimmo sliding hard into Bryson Stott late in the seventh inning of Sunday’s game on a fielder’s choice. Stott appeared to be OK with it.

But Nimmo, who grew up in Wyoming, would have been the prototypical beloved throwback type player in Philadelphia had he worn red pinstripes for most of his career. His time with the Mets has made him appreciate the intensity of baseball fandom in the Northeast.

“It’s really fun to be competitive,” Nimmo said, “I hear the boos when I go up there and it’s just part of baseball. it’s part of baseball, honestly, in the Northeast. Growing up with it and being on the Mets before, it’s good to know that they still remember me.”

The Phillies likely won’t see Nimmo again until next year, unless the Phillies and Rangers meet in this year’s World Series. His former team won’t play the Phillies until June, when the two teams meet up for a highly-anticipated weekend series at CBP in mid-June.

It will be strange not to see Nimmo in the lineup for the hated Mets when the time comes.

“Even though they don’t like me, I appreciate their passion for their team and the game,” Nimmo said. “It’s been a great atmosphere to play in. I enjoy it very much. And it’s totally OK that they don’t like me. I appreciate that they love their team and they want their team to do well.”