Nick Cimillo’s rise at Pirates keeps Rutgers baseball team in the spotlight

Mike Ashmore
| Specially for MyCentralJersey.com

BRIDGEWATER – The drive from TD Bank Ballpark to Bainton Field in Piscataway is 15 miles, but the journey Nick Cimillo has made over the past few years feels much longer.

The 24-year-old New York City native played his first three years of college baseball at Manhattan College before transferring to Rutgers for the 2022 season, where he put himself on the map. The Scarlet Knights’ primary catcher hit .385 with 16 home runs and 52 RBI en route to a 16^e round draft pick by the Pirates later that year.

Now the circle is complete for Cimillo, except for about 24 kilometers.

The 6-foot-1, 215-pound right-handed pitcher made his Double-A debut with the Altoona Curve on Friday night against the Somerset Patriots. He was called up from High-A Greensboro after a successful year.

“It’s really special,” Cimillo said before the game. “I played right here at Rutgers and I’ve already gotten texts from some of my coaches, some of them are coming out. I get to play in front of my family, some of my friends, so it’s special and I’m more than happy to be here.”

One of the most productive players in the MAAC with Manhattan, the finance major collected honors — including conference Rookie of the Year and All-First Team — in what is considered a lower conference than the “Power Five,” and said the move to Rutgers is what completely changed his career path and put him on a bigger stage.

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That was never a guarantee, though. The move to the Big Ten brought a significant jump in competition, but he finished as the conference leader with a .385 average, .707 slugging percentage and 1.199 OPS.

“I didn’t think it would go that smoothly (of a transition),” said Cimillo, who went 0-for-3 Friday night. “But I kept my head down, kept doing what I had to do on the court and off the court, and it just worked out in the end.”

It’s not the only transition he’s been able to make with relative ease. He’s caught just 14 times in his pro career so far, after switching to play primarily first base, a position he never saw at Manhattan or Rutgers.

“It was definitely a challenge at first, I’d never really played in the infield before,” he said. “But I really feel like I’ve stepped up to the plate and really gotten comfortable there. It was a little tough at first, but now I’m comfortable and getting better every day.”

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That trajectory is similar to that of baseball’s Rutgers team, which has been on the rise in recent years and saw four players selected in the most recent 2024 MLB Draft, including Franklin Township’s Josh Kuroda-Grauer, who went to the Athletics with the first pick of Day Two in the third round.

“It’s cool to see the program and every year more and more guys getting drafted,” Cimillo said. “There’s a lot of good players here in Jersey — most of those guys are from Jersey, myself being from Jersey — so it’s cool to see guys from out of town get picked up in the draft and continue their careers in baseball. It’s really good for the program and it shows that us guys from the Northeast can keep playing. … There’s always going to be some pressure (to continue that legacy), it’s pro ball, but I’m just going to go out there, play my game and let my game do the work.”