Death, Taxes, and Brandon Nimmo getting on base. Those are three things guaranteed in life. With Juan Lagares, Jay Bruce, Yoenis Cespedes, and Michael Conforto dealing with some sort of injury in camp, Nimmo has seemingly picked up right where his 2017 season ended.

Nimmo hit .260/.379/.418 in 2017 with a .348 wOBA and 117 wRC+. OPS does not give Nimmo enough credit because OBP matters more than slugging. That’s why his wRC+ and OPS+ differ so much (his OPS+ is 112 for reference). Nimmo’s expected weighted on-base average in 2017 was .345 which would say he wasn’t unlucky. People will be too quick to point to his .360 BABIP, but they forget he is a proficient walker.

One of Nimmo’s greatest strengths is his plate discipline. He only at swings at 17% pitches outside of the strike zone. That is a number that would make Joey Votto smile. On the flip side, Nimmo only swung at 59.3% of pitches in the zone, which was 30th worst in all of Major League Baseball among hitters with 200 plate appearances.

What has he been doing to fix that though? Nimmo told Anthony Dicomo of MLB.com the following:

“It does depend on how you’re feeling, but being a little more comfortable with [hitting coach Pat Roessler] and with my swing has helped to be able to go after those pitches earlier in the count.”

He sincerely wants to improve on that number and so far this spring, we have seen him try and be more aggressive at the plate. He has a great knowledge of the strike zone, one that you cannot just teach overnight.

Nimmo’s swing also looks different to what we were seeing just a couple of years ago. Here is his swing from batting practice in 2016:

If you notice, he’s not very crouched at the plate. Compare that to this year in batting practice:

Just some things I see immediately: his batting stance is far more crouched this year as opposed to 2016, his front foot is much closer to the front of the batter’s box this year, and his hands are in a much lower position. All these tricks are what some hitters use to try and launch the ball more often. Case and point, a certain player who used to play for the Mets tried these tricks to improve his game. Mike Petrillo tweeted out the photographic evidence:

In 2017, Nimmo’s launch angle was just 9.7 degrees but his exit velocity on balls in the air was 92.8 MPH the same as the former Met mentioned above and they both had a similar OBP.

There will be some who are concerned about Nimmo and his ability to handle center field, but I for one think he might be able to manage himself out there. Nimmo had a sprint speed of 28.5 feet-per-second in 2017, good for 60th in all of baseball. The average sprint speed for a center fielder is 27 feet-per-second. Two other center fielders who had a sprint speed of 28.5 FT/S were Mike Trout and Andrew McCutchen.

Neither graded out as Juan Lagares type defenders, but both were manageable in center. Trout had -4 outs above average in center field while McCutchen had zero. With good positioning, Nimmo can certainly handle himself in center field. There is no denying that Nimmo has the raw tools to succeed out there.

Your take away from this article should not be, “we have a Daniel Murphy type hitter, with Joey Votto type plate discipline, and gold glove defense.” However, the take away should be that we have a pretty good hitter who knows the strike zone really well and is trying to make himself better like other players have.

Nimmo might be cutting away at Lagares’ playing time in center and if he keeps improving, he might force Jay Bruce to pick a first base mitt once Michael Conforto returns.

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