In the pre-video age we used to play board games. One such was “The Game of Life” or just “Life.” In this game you had the option to go to college or start working right away. The Mets have their own version of this quandary with Brandon Nimmo and Michael Conforto, two players born less than a month apart. Nimmo turned pro after high school while Conforto went to college.
Both were first-round picks, with the Mets selecting Nimmo 13th overall in the 2011 Draft and Conforto with the 10th pick of the 2014 Draft. Many observers felt the Mets reached for Nimmo; many observers felt the Mets were lucky to get Conforto where they did.
Baseball America ranks the top 100 high school prospects each year. Among the 2011 high school class, Nimmo ranked 10th and Conforto placed 57th. Seeing this, it’s understandable why Nimmo turned pro and Conforto went to college. Still, it’s a tiny bit surprising that Nimmo bypassed college, coming from a state that did not have high school baseball.
However, Nimmo had a bunch of baseball experience, with a strong American Legion schedule as well as top prospect/All-Star games where he got national exposure. Still, speculation had him lasting until the 30s. On the day of the draft, online site MLBDraft.com held its final mock for 2011 and projected Nimmo to go 31st overall. Earlier, Jim Callis at Baseball America had him going at #33 (although he mentioned that the Mets liked him). Marc Hulet at FanGraphs also had him going 31st overall.
Whatever your feelings on the Nimmo pick, he did not exactly set the world on fire his first few years in the Mets organization. After an injury-marred season in 2013, some even considered him a disappointment. Meanwhile, Conforto’s stock rose considerably after his first two collegiate seasons. Entering his junior year, there was even speculation he might be the top overall pick in the draft, as he was selected the preseason college player of the year by the Sporting News.
But Conforto’s junior year did not exactly go as planned. It’s hard to be disappointed with a 1.028 OPS but his HR output was underwhelming. He finished the year with just seven homers, compared to the 13 he hit as a freshman. Conforto hit three homers for Brooklyn after the Mets drafted him, not quite the 14 HR that Cory Vaughn hit for the Cyclones back in 2010.
Yet Conforto hit .331 in his professional debut and his defense in left field was much better than advertised. Overall, it was a very strong showing.
Meanwhile, Nimmo enjoyed the finest year of his professional career in 2014. Freed from the stifling hitting environment of Grayson Stadium, where he had just a .681 OPS, Nimmo hit the cover off the ball at Hi-A St. Lucie, where he recorded a .906 OPS before a mid-year promotion to Double-A.
Nimmo struggled mightily at first in Binghamton, posting a .685 OPS in his first 91 PA in Double-A. But over the remainder of the season, a stretch covering 188 PA, Nimmo posted a respectable .758 OPS.
So, we have two guys the same age, both former first-round picks who are projected to play the same position in the majors (corner outfielder). One had a successful 186 PA in a short-season league (.851 OPS) and the other had a successful 279 PA in Hi-A (.906 OPS) and another 279 PA in Double-A.
How would you rank these two prospects? Here are some notable lists for comparison:
| Nimmo | Conforto | |
|---|---|---|
| Mack Ade | 8 | 4 |
| Amazin’ Avenue | 3 | 7 |
| Baseball America | 3 | 7 |
| Baseball Prospectus | 3 | 9 |
| FanGraphs | 6 | 4 |
| Keith Law | 6 | 2 |
| Mets360 | 6 | 7 |
| Minor League Ball | 4 | 7 |
| MLB.com | 4 | 5 |
| Top Prospect Alert | 8 | 2 |
Of these 10 lists, Nimmo got the higher ranking six times and Conforto came out on top four times. It looks like the ones who have a heavier basis on scouting favor Conforto, with Baseball America being the notable exception. When Nimmo was drafted, he carried the five-tool label but it does not look like either his power or speed will overwhelm folks. However, he did take a step forward in power last year and supposedly new batting coach Kevin Long is working on that same issue with him.
Does Conforto have better tools? Maybe. Or maybe he just hasn’t been through the minor league grind like Nimmo has been. It will be curious to see how Conforto’s power plays in his first taste of full-season ball here in 2015.
An intriguing possibility is that Conforto and Nimmo could be teammates at some point this year. Nimmo hardly mastered Double-A and it shouldn’t be a surprise to see him back at Binghamton at the start of the season. Meanwhile, it’s anyone’s guess where Conforto’s opening assignment will be.
A typical assignment for a first-round collegiate pick is to open his first full year with an MLB organization in either Hi-A or Double-A. While a Double-A assignment would have been too aggressive for the 2011-2013 Mets, we saw the team much more likely to push their prospects last year. Now, my opinion is that a Hi-A assignment for Conforto is the likely outcome but opening the year at Binghamton is not impossible.
Regardless of where both Nimmo and Conforto are placed to open the 2015 season, here’s hoping that they follow up with even better years than they had a season ago. All Mets fans hope these two first-round picks born in the same month but with a draft distance of three years will hold down the team’s corner outfield spots in the majors for a decade or more.
And that this Mets organization can succeed developing guys drafted both out of high school and college.
Thoughtful post. Nimmo is like our new Flores – seems like he’s been in the organization forever. Given the ages of our corner outfielders I hope at least one of these guys is MLB ready by 2016.
Good post, liked the “Life” analogy.
One point: I think the “no HS team” element has been widely overstated and misunderstood. It’s not like Nimmo was working out in a barn all this time.
What we’ve seen in youth sports over the past 20 years is a shift from school-based sports to AAU and Travel. It’s gotten to the point where folks who have D-1 caliber players will admit that HS sports don’t matter. The real deal is in AAU, where the overall talent pool is much richer. In addition, many HS coaches are recruited from the available teacher pool — the science teacher earning an extra $5,000. Some of those guys are great, fantastic coaches. Many others are not. The USA soccer federation — or some official body I can’t quite recall — has even gone so far as to recommend that top players stop playing HS soccer altogether. We might find that sad, or misguided, or whatever. But clearly that’s the way youth sports is going.
Anyway, that Nimmo did not play a 25-game HS season doesn’t really tell me much of anything. I’ve always assumed he was playing somewhere, right?
Think about these top talents in Florida, Texas, and California who play 140 games a season in various travel & AAU organizations. How important is their HS season? My bet is that many of them probably find it unproductive compared to their higher-level training and competition elsewhere.
I agree but let’s not pretend that all AAU coaches are good, either.
This is true, Brian. Many are horrendous. Not making any pro or con statements about it, just describing the new reality. At least as parents, if your kid has talent, you are able to choose the coach & program that you want to join. There’s a degree of choice.
While everyone mentions Nimmo not having a HS team, the part that’s truly remarkable is that he emerged out of the frozen North. When it comes to opportunity, those kids in warmer climates have such an advantage.
There’s a line of thought that suggests drafting Nimmo out of HS was brilliant. Here’s a good kid, with excellent talent, from Wyoming, who you can bring into your system to develop over a 4-5 year period. The thought process might have been that given more opportunity, this diamond in the rough could advance faster, and farther, than similar prospects from other areas. Also, chances of a one-sport burn-out type athlete go way down; it’s not like Nimmo has been playing year round since age 8.
If this kid succeeds, it says a lot of good things about the pick and the farm system.
I’ve long been a fan of the Nimmo pick.
If he hit the 5-tool upside, you had a monster prospect. In the likely event he fell short, you still had a guy who could be a useful MLB regular.
If you’re drafting in the top half of the first round, you’ve got to pick ceiling over floor. It’s why the Cecchini pick was so disappointing. You don’t go safe with the 12th pick of the draft.
My Nimmo vs. Conforto thinking is that Conforto has had some offensive success while Nimmo has mostly been known as a high OBP player. He never impressed like Conforto did in Brooklyn, but I have no problem with letting Nimmo show himself first.
For some reason, Nimmo makes me think of Nick Markakis. Not overwhelming talent but solid all around. Would I be happy with this player as his ceiling? I guess I would, knowing that just making it to MLB is very difficult.
I’m thinking that if the Mets have eight solid all-around contributors on the field and an awesome pitching staff, we will not need to have the stars like Reyes and Wright that we have gotten used to having.
If that’s 2007-08 Markakis – sign me up!
Agreed!
My question is when are we going to start seeing these guys? Nimmo’s been toiling in the minors for years and Conforto was a top draft pick out of college.
I don’t know about years, he was drafted at 18 and has played two years below league average each sesson, has not repeated a year and advanced to AA at age 21, so from a time perspective, he has moved pretty quickly and Conforto was just drafted last year. Even Bryan has spent two years in the minors. Between Nimmo, Smith, Cecchini and Rosario, the Mets have actually pushed their young talent aggressively, but that is the deal with drafting high school players. The good news is that after years of graduating a ton of pitching, the next few years should see some of the positional talent start to come
Well if it makes ya feel any better the only high schooler in the 2011 1st rd who has contributed in the majors is Jose Fernandez (ofcourse marlins selected him right after nimmo). 29 of the 32 highschoolers in the first rd that year have yet to appear in the big leagues. So Nimmo isn’t alone
I’d like to see Conforto at AA from the beginning in 2015.
He will probably start in St Lucia and move quickly to Bingo if he hits. They don’t want to get him overmatched to start and they probably want early eyes on him and that is best done near their complex
The two picks really go to show how flexible this FO has been in it’s drafting strategy, IMO. I was a big fan of the Nimmo pick when they made it, though it did seem admittedly like a bit of a reach with lots of risk. So far, it seems that it has a good shot at working out even if he never becomes a monster prospect.
Conforto was more of a traditional pick in a “if this guy slips to you you’d be crazy not to take him” kind of way. It’d be pretty cool to see these two guys, born so close together but with such different paths, debut together in NY.
I didn’t like the Nimmo pick one bit. But than again, any time the Mets invest a 1st rd pick on a player out of high school I cringe. In the last 30 years the Mets have used a 1st rd pick on a player out of HS 21 times. Only 5 of them ever made it to the big leagues. David Wright, Lastings Milledge, Keppel, Kazmir Jefferies . 2 busts, one face of the franchise and we all know about Kazmir and Jefferies. Unless the player in High School is a LOCK like a Griffey Jr, or a Chipper Jones etc rolling the dice on a HS player with your most important draft pick is ridiculous if ya ask me.
Let’s not pretend the Mets’ college picks in this span have been super wonderful.
Ike Davis, Reese Havens, Brad Holt, Eddie Kunz, Mike Pelfrey, Phil Humber, Aaron Heilman, Billy Traber, Jason Tyner, Paul Wilson, Jay Payton, Chris Roberts, Bobby Jones, Jeremy Burnitz, Alan Zinter, Dave Proctor, Chris Donnels, Stan Jefferson, Calvin Schiraldi, Terry Blocker
The drafting improved once Minaya took over and has potentially improved again with Alderson.