My rankings
is solely subjective and based on nothing more than what is in my head at time
I’m writing this. I’ve followed the Mets minor league players for many years
and I feel I can recognize talent at various levels of their development. What
I have failed at is how to determine when this talent seems to diminish. It’s
amazing how many first round picks never make it in this game.
I’m old
school, so you won’t seem much SABR-discussion here, I do research and, when I
find a good quote or two, I’ll add them to my analysis, but, like I said in the
beginning of this post, most of this us subjective.
Let’s get
started.
#8 – OF – Brandon
Nimmo – 21-years old – 6-3, 205 – L/R – Cheyenne East HS (WY)
1st
round 2011 draft –
2011
– K/Port/GCL – 38-AB, .211/.318/.368/687, 2-HR, 4-RBI
2012
– Brklyn – 266-AB, .248/.372/.406/778, 6-HR, 40-RBI
2013
– Sav - 395-AB, .273/.397/.359/756,
2-HR, 40-RBI
2014
- StL/B-Mets - 467-AB, .278/.394/.426/820, 10-HR, 51-RBI
What did they say about Nimmo at the time of
the draft –
Keith Law - Nimmo's
high school in Cheyenne, Wyo., doesn't have a baseball team, so he spent the
spring playing with his American Legion club after opening eyes all last summer
on the showcase circuit.
He has
strong hands and good hand-eye coordination, with a frame that looks built for
some future power if he can get a little more rotational. He has the arm to
play right field and has shown good speed in the past, although he's been
bothered this spring by tendinitis in his right knee, which is the same knee he
had ACL surgery on in 2009.
The biggest
problem for scouts, however, is the fact that Nimmo won't see high-quality
pitching this spring. His swing looks good, but evaluating his plate discipline
or ability to catch up to better velocity will be tough.
First of
all, we are now entering the ‘Elite Eight’ on this team. Most of these guys
could be interchanged from ranking #2-8 (#1 stays the same), so don’t think
that I have lowered Nimmo here to #8. I just have some other guys that, in my
mind, have past him on the list.
As you can
see from above, not much was said about Nimmo at draft time because not much
was known about him. I was very vocal about the pick, not because of the
player’s talent but because you just don’t take a chance and use your 13th
overall pick on someone who never even played high school baseball (he also lived
in Wyoming, not a mecca for baseball talent so even the American Legion
pitching he faced was sub-par compared to high school pitching in States like
California, Georgia, and Florida).
Given all
this, the boy’s done well.
I’m drawn to
two facts… one, he hit .322 for St. Lucie (227-AB) last year… and he hit a
combined career high 10 home runs for St. Lucie and Binghamton last season.
We’re so used
to players going in the wrong direction as they climb affiliate levels. This isn’t
happening here.
Outlook –
The Michael Cuddyer signing might be the best thing that
ever happened for Nimmo. The Mets 2015 outfield is set and there is no reason
to rush things here. He really needs some more time at the AA level, which
would set him up to finish the season in Las Vegas.
We’ve
written before that he’s living in Port St. Lucie during the off-season,
working on conditioning and muscle development.
I’ll give
him a safe, conservative ETA of opening day 2017 which would fit perfectly with
Cuddyer’s departure.
3 comments:
Nimmo hopefully (for me) will take me and others by surprise in 2015 and hopefully show up ready to start in 2016.
He's got a long way to go to match Dekker's 2014 40 game stretch in AAA of .420/.500/.700. I see keith law had him at #91. Let's hope that is reasonably accurate.
Speaking of Law, 6 Mets in his top 100, but no Matz? Sorry. He belongs somewhere in there (60's?)
and, as I understand, no Herrera
Right, no Herrera - hopefully, that is only due to his having played with Mets in Sept.
Otherwise, that is heresy (Herrerasy?) on Law's part, IMO.
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