Brandon Nimmo Reflects on Facing New Rangers Manager Skip Schumaker

Brandon Nimmo will play for Texas Rangers manager Skip Schumaker this season. But he remembers facing him in the National League East.

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New Texas Rangers outfielder Brandon Nimmo already has connections to the organization.

President of baseball operations Chris Young was a New York Mets starting pitcher when Nimmo joined the organization as a first-round draft pick. New Rangers first base coach Travis Jankowski, who will also coach the outfielders, was Nimmo’s teammate last year in New York. Plus, Nimmo and Rangers starting pitcher Jacob deGrom go way back. The pair came up in that organization together.

But there is another connection that is less about teammates and more about competition, and that’s his new boss, manager Skip Schumaker. The pair squared off in the National League East when Schumaker was guiding the Miami Marlins from 2023-24. Nimmo said he observed a lot about his new manager in those two seasons.

Brandon Nimmo on Facing Skip Schumaker

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Nimmo’s exposure to Schumaker as a manager was limited to his two seasons in charge of the Marlins. But he agreed with a one-word description for his teams — “pesky.”

“That's what I remember,” Nimmo said. “I remember them playing hard-nosed baseball. I remember them, you know, trying to figure [it] out. You know not everybody can win the same way. You have to find out, what are your strengths? What are your weaknesses? And [then] figure out, what's the other side’s strengths and weaknesses, and how do we expose that? And to me, it seemed like they tried to expose that every single time. We always hated playing the Marlins, to be honest with you, because they were so pesky.”

Schumaker played in the Majors for more than 10 years, notably with the St. Louis Cardinals when they beat the Texas Rangers in the 2011 World Series. He moved into a coaching career afterward, working with the San Diego Padres and the Cardinals until he was hired away to manage the Marlins before the 2023 season.

In 2023 he guided them to 84 wins and a National League wild card playoff berth. The following year Miami won just 62 games and Schumaker was done by season’s end as he and the franchise mutually parted ways. He joined the Rangers in 2025 as a special advisor to Young and replaced Bruce Bochy after he and the Rangers parted ways after three seasons, which included the 2023 World Series title.

Nimmo, a left-handed hitter has had a powerful bat for the past several years. He’s hit at least 23 home runs and at least 30 doubles in each of the last three seasons. In his last four seasons he’s averaged a slash of .259/.346/.434 with 88 home runs and 314 RBI.

He was the Mets’ first-round pick in 2011 out of Cheyenne, Wyo., who made his MLB debut in 2016. With New York, he became a fan favorite, and he left with a career slash of .262/.364/.438 with 135 home runs and 463 RBI. He is under contract through 2030, part of an eight-year, $162 million deal he signed with the Mets before the 2023 season.