During the offseason, Mickey Callaway made it abundantly clear that the team’s plan was to have Brandon Nimmo leading off on Opening Day and hopefully for the entirety of the season.

However, Nimmo has not been nearly as impressive as he was last season as he is currently hitting .219/.345/.397 with three home runs and eight RBI to give himself a 0.3 WAR and 1o5 wRC+ this season. He is also currently striking out in 36.4% of his plate appearances.

As a result, the team has decided to switch things up a bit, in which they had the scorching hot Jeff McNeil lead off on Friday night against the Milwaukee Brewers as they placed Nimmo in the sixth spot in the lineup.

Callaway’s biggest reasoning for this decision has to with on-base percentage, as detailed by Mike Puma of the New York Post.

“It’s something we have to be open-minded about. Players go through ups and downs and if we can strategically use those two spots for those guys to be a better ballclub this day or that day or help one of them out, then we will.”

“It’s nice to have the pitcher throw seven pitches to the first batter, but it’s more about on-base percentage and McNeil is our highest on-base percentage guy at this point.”

McNeil, 27, has so far picked up right where he left off in 2019 slashing .365/.438/.506 with one home run and 11 RBI to give himself a 159 wRC+ and 0.8 WAR. He also an extremely low 9.4% strikeout rate

Last night’s experiment also worked out pretty well, as McNeil went 2-for-5 with two doubles and a run scored while Nimmo went 2-for-4 with one double and a run scored. So, essentially, the only two runs scored in the game had something to do with both of them.

It certainly is arguable that the team should stick to this lineup structure, given the fact that McNeil has reached base in 20 of his 22 starts this season and has hit .355 (11-for-31) in the leadoff spot for his career.

Nimmo, 26, for comparison, has hit .252/.378/.464 with 14 home runs and 36 RBI with 66 runs scored, albeit in a much larger sample size (417 plate appearances), in the leadoff spot for his career.

It remains to be seen whether or not the team decides to stick with this lineup over the long-haul, but given last night’s results, it should be expected that they will at least keep trying this for a little bit longer.