by A few hours before first pitch, Jacob Reimer serenaded Brooklyn’s clubhouse with the sounds of Taylor Swift.
About 24 hours prior, Reimer became the first Cyclone since 2005 to hit three home runs in a game. He went on “Intentional Talk” on MLB Network the next day, where he revealed that he is a Swiftie. Naturally, the rest of the team required a karaoke performance.
“They had a speaker ready, and they played ‘You Belong With Me’ right when I got back to the locker room,” Reimer said. “Started jumping up and down around me, it was pretty funny. And so, I had to sing along. Jumped on top of a table, and put on a performance for them.”
The Cyclones walloped the Wilmington Blue Rocks 15-1 on April 30 and every single player in the lineup had at least one hit, but no one stood out more than Reimer.
He got Brooklyn on the board early with his first home run of the day in the first inning, and then followed that up with his second home run in the second inning to cap a six-run frame. After grounding out in the fourth inning, Reimer connected for a third time in four at-bats and launched one out to left-center field, etching himself into Brooklyn’s history books.
“It was special,” Cyclones manager Gilbert Gómez said. “Especially after he put the work in, and you see the guys go at it every day, being rewarded with a day like that, I think it’s always fun to see.”
Reimer said he really had to focus on sticking to his approach because of the expectations that come from already hitting one — and especially two — home runs. He said it came down to staying mentally locked in.
“When you have a day going like that, and you can do something pretty special, you really want to do it,” Reimer said. “… It’s hard in the box not to be thinking about that, because when the pitch is coming, you don’t have time to think about that. You’ve just gotta see it and hit it.”
Reimer’s three-home run game was hardly the first big offensive game for the 21-year-old over the opening month of the season, and it also wasn’t the last. Through his first 27 games, Reimer is hitting .330/.408/.623/1.031 with five homers, three triples, and 10 doubles.
No qualified player in the South Atlantic League had a better batting average or OPS than Reimer, and his 18 extra-base hits also led the league. It’s no surprise he was named South Atlantic League Player of the Month for April.
One of the things that’s contributed to his success this season has been his work in the Mets’ hitting lab, a newer development. The Athletic wrote about the Mets’ hitting lab in February, detailing Jeff McNeil’s first foray this spring, Brandon Nimmo’s work over the offseason, and the visits of former Cyclones Jett Williams and Kevin Parada.
Reimer has been as well.
“In the hitting lab, you get in there, and all the data from the swings you take will show everything from the tiny, tiny, tiniest millisecond of your sequence, to where you’re standing, to your posture, to how open you are shoulder-wise, or anything like that,” Reimer said.
Reimer said you can put your swings next to both your own past swings and swings of other players, like Pete Alonso. You can then match your swing to those, and then do drills that are developed for each player based on all the information acquired.
“I would say it’s just the trust, and realizing these guys know what they’re talking about,” Reimer said about why he’s taken to the hitting lab. “It’s hard to buy in sometimes, because it is your career. These things can affect you, people could go out and not perform because of such things. It’s really just buying in, and once you buy in, I really feel like you do these drills every day, trust the process … even when you’re hitting badly in BP in the offseason, trusting the work you’re putting in is going to lead somewhere. And sure enough, it did so far.”
Reimer has bought in.
“It’s awesome, they do a great job, and it’s only gonna get better,” Reimer said. “This organization’s on the way to the top for sure.”
A 2022 fourth-round pick, Reimer has now spent parts of three seasons in Brooklyn despite playing fewer than 75 games in a Cyclones uniform. He was promoted near the end of 2023 at just 19 years old after a successful 75 games in Single-A St. Lucie, and was supposed to spend most of 2024 in Brooklyn, as well, but pulled his hamstring shortly before the season was supposed to kick off.
That injury, which he said he re-injured multiple times, kept him out of games until July and, really, plagued him all season.
“Once I was finally healthy, I didn’t feel healthy,” Reimer said. “My mindset was always, ‘If I run too hard here, I might tear my hamstring again.’ When you’re playing baseball, if you’re 50% in, you’re not gonna perform.”
Reimer played in the Arizona Fall League after the minor league season ended and got to face some higher-level pitchers, which he said was his biggest takeaway from the experience. He loved it, especially having family in Scottsdale, but it wasn’t until this offseason that he finally got back to trusting his body. For the first time since before his hamstring injury, he feels fully healthy.
“My goal this year is to play as many games as I possibly can,” Reimer said.
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