At times yesterday it seemed like Brandon Nimmo was trying to single-handedly drag the Mets to victory. He got the team’s first hit and scored their first run in the sixth inning. His next time up in the seventh he hit a 412-foot home run to tie the game. Nimmo again tied the game in the 10th inning with an RBI double. But despite him being on second base with no outs, his teammates could not get him home to win the game.
Nimmo’s big day at the plate yesterday raised his OPS to .815, cracking the .800 level for the first time since May 12 and the highest it’s been since April 14. It’s been a wacky and unusual season so far for Nimmo, who started the year off 0-23 and has fluctuated between really hot and really cold spells all season.
While he’s certainly been streaky before, his stretches usually run for a longer period than they have here in 2024. Last year, in his final 42 games of the season, Nimmo had a .963 OPS. Neither his hot streaks nor cold spells have reached that many games this year. His longest stretch in either direction has been the 25 games from 5/13-6/13 when he posted a .559 OPS.
But Nimmo broke out of that cold stretch and has been on fire the second half of June. In his last 14 games, Nimmo has a higher SLG mark than his OPS over the previous 25-game stretch. He’s slashing .382/.485/.782 in his last 66 PA. Yeah, the hits are falling in for him. But he’s cut down on his strikeouts, upped his walks and a .400 ISO tells you he’s delivering the power. Ten of his 21 hits have gone for extra-bases, including six homers.
In these last 14 games, Nimmo has both 9 BB and 9 Ks. A 13.6 BB% is excellent. So is a 13.6K%. A big part of the problem in Nimmo’s cold stretches this year has been an elevated K%. In the 25 games immediately preceding this hot stretch, Nimmo fanned 38 times in 108 PA for a 35.3 K%. Strikeouts have always been part of Nimmo’s game. At the start of his MLB career, he was consistently above a 25.0 K%. But he’s improved since then, posting a career-low 17.2 rate in 2022. With his streaky play this year, Nimmo has a 23.6 K% thru the first three months of the season.
This year has seen Nimmo hit the ball harder than what he’s done previously. His HardHit% is in the 89th percentile for MLB and at 49.3%, it’s nearly 10 percentage points higher than it was just two seasons ago. Additionally, Nimmo’s 92.4 average exit velocity is a career-high, a mark that puts him in the 92nd percentile in the majors.
So, what happens if Nimmo hits the ball harder than ever and makes contact? This most recent stretch shows the possibilities. Now the question is if he can do it for longer than two weeks. He had a seven-week stretch at the end of 2023 where he had the .963 OPS along with a 40.3 HardHit% and a 19.5 K%, so it’s certainly possible.
My opinion is that Nimmo’s broad range of skills makes him one of the best players in the game. But the injuries he’s suffered, along with his streaky play, have kept the rest of the baseball world from seeing him that way. With the Mets not having a slam dunk choice to make the All-Star team this year, it’s possible that Nimmo finally gets picked, which would certainly add to his national profile.
But at the end of the day, it really doesn’t matter if the average baseball fan recognizes how good Nimmo really is. My hope is that all Mets fans appreciate what he brings to the table. And that certainly hasn’t always been the case. It started off with people thinking that the Mets overdrafted him. And then injuries in the minors slowed his ascent to the majors. Some called him a bust. And then he got tagged with the “fourth outfielder” label. Then others thought that Michael Conforto was better.
None of that was true.
Since 2021, Nimmo’s 133 wRC+ is the best mark for the Mets among those with at least 500 PA. And his 15.6 fWAR ranks second to Francisco Lindor. This year, despite the ugly start and the brutal 25-game stretch from mid-May to mid-June, Nimmo has a 139 wRC+ and a 2.7 fWAR thru the first 81 games of the season. His career best marks are a 148 wRC+ in 2018 and a 5.5 fWAR in 2022. He has a chance to top both of those marks this year.