Brandon Nimmo has had his shares of ups and downs for the Mets this season as he was a borderline All-Star candidate in the first half as he finished the month of June with a .270/.389/.540 slash line with 12 home runs and 25 RBI.
However, he encountered a rough month of July that saw him hit .205/.359/.301 with only one home run and six RBI to show for it. On top of it, he struck out 35 times in only 83 at-bats.
The 25-year-old bounced back in the month of August, though, hitting .349/.423/.635 with two home runs, nine RBI, and eight doubles.
In total to this point, Nimmo has a .266/.397/.495 slash line with 17 home runs, 47 RBI, 26 doubles, and eight triples to give him a .892 OPS and a 148 wRC+. He is also tied for first in the majors with 21 HBP, which happens to be a franchise record as well per the Mets game notes.
Nimmo spoke to Tim Britton of the Athletic recently about what he has changed throughout this season to find success again.
“Baseball is ebbs and flows. You go up and down, you try to make those adjustments. Really, we just try to work on the swing and work on pitch selection. I think maybe the one difference is I have seemed to be fouling fewer balls off over the last month.
“That’s been the biggest difference this past month, is getting my A swing out on a mistake and then being done with that at-bat. Normally, if you’re making contact on a mistake, we’re supposed to barrel that ball up, put it in play hard somewhere, and that gives you a good shot to get on base. I’ve been seeing more of that over the past month.”
The outfielder also believes that he has been better at squaring up the baseball the other way, which has made him more difficult to strikeout.
“I think I’ve been going the other way better this past month. It’s one of those things where I’m not necessarily a Tony Gwynn; I can’t just put it where I want all the time. I’m trying to hit it where it’s pitched. Up there, trying to pull it, you’re probably going to have to be sitting on that early. If you’re able to shoot that the other way, then that gives you a better shot of staying on more pitches and being able to let that travel.”
Obviously, Nimmo wasn’t too happy to have to take a month long-slump in order to find his rhythm again and is hoping to have shorter slumps of that nature, but knows they will happen in every big-league career.
“You want to make those valleys as short as possible. I wish I could say that I don’t worry, but it’s that competitiveness because today’s game is the most important, and I want to help today. Even if you told me, ‘You’ll help a week from now,’ that’s a week, and I want to be helping now. You’ve got to just grind and battle through those days when you’re not at your best and try to find a way to help the team.”
Nimmo will without a doubt be in the outfield for the Mets come next season and the team will be hoping to see a continuingly improving building block for the organization in 2019.
