Tomas Nido, one of the hardest-working Mets ever

Long-time Mets catcher Tomas Nido now plays for the Syracuse Mets. His future is cloudy. He will probably return to the Majors at some point, possibly even to the Mets, but none of that is a given. Nido was never an elite prospect, he was an 8th round selection in the 2012 draft. He actually was thought of as a more offense -oriented prospect at first, but Nido worked at mastering the catcher position. He improved the accuracy of his throws, he went from a poor framer at first to being one of the best.

Nido also worked hard on blocking errant pitches. Initial scouting reports showed he was sub-par in blocking. However, in the 2022 season FanGraphs credited him with 12 blocks above average, enough to place him 5th among MLB catchers. That high ranking is impressive enough, but all the catchers above him had more innings behind the plate than Nido did. Nido started out the year behind James McCann on the depth chart, so he had less opportunity than the other backstops above him to record blocks.

Last season with the Mets was the culmination of his defensive improvement. The career backup won the starting job over McCann, He was credited with a fine DRS figure of 8. He was rewarded by being selected as one of three finalists for the 2022 NL Gold Glove Award for catchers.

With respect to batting, he was believed to have raw power in the initial scouting reports, but he really only showed flashes of that in his career. But he did work on some of the little, less glamorous aspects of batting. For example, with the coming of the DH to the NL in 2022, Nido surmised he would probably be batting 9th most of the time. Figuring he would probably get some bunt signs with the top of the order batting behind him, he worked on improving his sacrifice bunt ability. In his first five years in the Majors, he had exactly one sacrifice bunt. In 2022, he had 12 sacrifice bunts, enough to lead the league.

Although his slashline in 2022 was nothing exciting at ..239/.276/.327, he did show a knack for getting timely hits. His BA with runners in scoring position was a healthy .282, showing that he came through in the clutch at a pretty good rate.

A good example of Nido going beyond the norm in working to help his team was the fact that, in the recent offseason he took lessons in learning some of the Japanese language. He chose to learn some of this challenging tongue not because he wanted to be a sort of renaissance man, but because he knew the Mets had signed pitcher Kodai Senga from the Japanese baseball league, who knew little English. I’m sure Nido was not intending to master all of the complex language, but by learning some common grammar and key baseball terms he was going to better able to communicate with Senga during the game and after.

Nido had a pretty good start to the off-season, being in the hunt for the Gold Glove and getting a contract extension from the Mets. Then things went downhill…fast. By spring training Nido started having vision problems. He had Lasik eye surgery back in 2019, which eventually caused dry eye syndrome, the affliction that impaired his vision this year. Nido tried to play through the problem, mainly because injuries made the Mets somewhat short-handed at the catcher position. The results were not pretty. Nido had a .278 OPS for 2023. Of course, its hard enough to hit MLB pitching, with degraded eyesight it is even worse. Vision prloblems affected other aspects of his game, including throwing. The good news is Nido had an eye procedure done in early May, it necessitated him being on the IL but Nido reported considerably improved vision after the procedure. However, in his absence rookie catcher Francisco Alvarez flourished, and shortly after Nido exited the IL, so did catcher Omar Narvaez who was having a better year than Nido. The result was a one-way ticket to Syracuse for Nido.

Assuming his vision woes are mostly behind him, Nido will probably get some more time in the majors, superb defensive backup catchers are in demand. But Nido could have an impact when his playing days ae over. His combination of baseball smarts, strong work ethic and even language skills could mean he might have a future as an MLB manger, many successful managers were catchers in their playing days. Perhaps one day we’ll see Nido sitting in the dugout, calling the shots for the orange and blue clad Metropolitans.