Juan Soto simply can not catch a break right now.
Even when the Mets’ star outfielder drives a ball, it somehow finds its way into an out.
Soto came up with one out in the bottom of the first and smacked an 0-1 changeup from White Sox right-hander Jonathan Cannon into the gap — and Michael A. Taylor made a diving attempt to catch the liner.
Taylor trapped the ball as it dropped in for an extra-base hit, but Brandon Nimmo — who had already rounded second on the play– thought he was able to come up with the catch.
As Nimmo began quickly racing back towards first, Soto danced out of the base path to get out of his way and the White Sox threw the ball back in — stepping on second to record the second out of the inning.
After the umps had a brief discussion, crew chief Sean Barber told the crowd that Soto was ruled out for passing Nimmo on the basepaths — and it ended up going down in the books as a 354-foot unassisted lineout to the first baseman.
Juan Soto was called out after Brandon Nimmo passed him on the base paths on a hit that was trapped by Michael A. Taylor pic.twitter.com/SUgy5DuEbU
— SNY (@SNYtv) May 27, 2025
Nimmo explained postgame that he wasn’t looking at the ump for a ruling when he turned around, and has been going off of instinct since the Mets’ wrongly called triple play a few weeks ago against the Nationals.
“When Soto hit it, I thought that’s down for sure for a double or better,” he said. “I went to go around the bag and had my back to the play and then I heard the crowd act like the ball was caught, so I turned around and went to get back to first base — that’s what happened.
“I went and looked at the play afterwards — probably shouldn’t be so aggressive, maybe just watch the play a little bit more, that’s the quick fix to it. But still, I looked at the play and he caught it short hop, so I can see where everyone was confused — just one of those plays that’s unfortunate.”
Luckily for Nimmo, the rest of the Mets’ offense was able to pick him up.
After his blunder, they went on to string together five consecutive two-out knocks against Cannon, including a pair of two-run homers from Pete Alonso and Jared Young to push themselves back in front for good.
“I mean, what a great inning,” Nimmo said. “I think almost the whole lineup had a hit, so that was fantastic. Definitely glad that Pete hit the home run there, but the whole offense did a great job there in the first inning — it was a great start.”
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