PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. -- Brandon Nimmo swears he cooked the chicken just fine.

A day after the Mets sent him home early due to a stomach ailment, and two days after Nimmo sat down to enjoy a home-cooked dinner of chicken and sweet potatoes with a garlic-herb topping, Nimmo was in good enough health and spirits to joke about the episode.

“I cooked it all the way through,” Nimmo said after returning to Mets camp on Thursday morning. “It was white. I didn’t have a meat thermometer, so maybe I should invest in one of those digital meat thermometers to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”

Nimmo says his ailment woke him up at 1 a.m. on Wednesday and made for a miserable night. He dropped four pounds but has since managed to stomach some chicken noodle soup, with hopes of returning to the Mets’ lineup as soon as Saturday.

Whether he’ll attempt a new recipe anytime soon remains to be seen. Nimmo says he baked his chicken at 400 degrees for 25 minutes, but “apparently, that wasn’t good enough.” Still, he enjoyed the meal.

“I’m not going to lie, I took a picture of it and sent it to my wife because it looked good and it tasted good,” Nimmo said, laughing. “I just threw this one together and I was like, ‘This one’s pretty good.’ And I took a picture. She can confirm that. It did not end up well.”

Although Nimmo was able to joke about the episode on Thursday, the Mets’ happiest player debunked social-media rumors that he managed to keep grinning during his sickness.

“I was not, I can tell you that much,” Nimmo said. “It was miserable. … I was not smiling during that.”

Elbow issues
Infielder T.J. Rivera, who is still working to get back from his Sept. 2017 Tommy John surgery, downplayed the significance of the elbow soreness that continues to keep him out of Grapefruit League games.

"I'm just trying to make sure I'm almost back to 100 percent before I go out there in a game and speed things up," Rivera said. "I've been feeling great up until I had a little discomfort recently. It's not lingering. I hadn't felt anything. It's nothing serious. But since it's early in spring, I'm trying to ease off on it so I can ramp it back up and get ready to play in some games."

Rivera said this latest bout of elbow discomfort is nothing like what he felt last July, when pain in the joint forced him to cut short a Minor League rehab assignment. He described his current issue as more of a minor ache that does not affect his range of motion.

In particular, Rivera said he has leaned on pitcher Steven Matz, who assured him that rehab setbacks are normal.

"Everybody feels a little worried when they go through this process," Rivera said. "You don’t know what's right and what's wrong, and what you're supposed to feel and what you're not supposed to feel. So that makes it a little tough. But when you know the arm is OK, it's just these aches and pains you need to get through to get over that last hump."

From the trainer's room Tim Tebow sat out a fourth consecutive game Thursday, but has no major medical concerns. The Mets expect him back in the lineup on Friday.

Up next
The Mets will embark on their longest spring road trip when they travel more than four hours round-trip for a 1:05 p.m. ET game Friday in Lakeland, Fla. Jacob deGrom will make his second start of the Grapefruit League season, opposite Tigers right-hander Tyson Ross. Also scheduled to pitch for the Mets are bullpen cogs Seth Lugo and Robert Gsellman.