MMO Top 20 Mets Prospects - #5 Brandon Nimmo, OF

With the 13th pick of the 2011 MLB Amateur Draft, the New York Mets take Brandon Nimmo….outfielder, Cheyenne, Wyoming. What? No 26-year-old seasoned college veteran, who projects to be coming out of the Citifield bullpen in less than a year? Nope. Far from it. The Mets actually drafted an 18-year-old high school athlete with their first pick in this years draft. It’s a miracle! A dad-burned miracle!! You mean you can actually do that? It’s legal? I thought you had to take college players in the draft. That’s how it’s always been around these parts. What a novel idea- draft a kid with tremendous upside and take some initiative by training him properly. Whoa.

Of course there’s those stat people. You know the one’s I mean. All they know about baseball is numbers. What’s his OBP? What was his WAR in high school? “I can’t endorse a guy if I can’t plug his numbers into something so it can tell me if the guy is a baseball player or not!” Well if your one of those, Brandon Nimmo was not the pick for you. And you’re probably still angry at the team for drafting him. Well this article is not for you, so you can stop reading now. Go on. Go back to the MMO home page, and find something else that interests you to read about. Something with lots of numbers and stat comparisons, because your not going to get any of that here.

The reason the Mets drafted Nimmo in the first round was because they knew he wouldn’t still be there in the 2nd round, and they really wanted him bad. Why? What was so great about some kid that had to play American Legion ball instead of high school baseball because his school, like all the other schools in the state of Wyoming, didn’t have a team? Projection, that’s why. Projection applied through the analysis of a player’s inherent talent. Talent that you have to look at live, on a playing field, to see what it truly is all about. The Mets did that with Nimmo, and determined they simply had to have him, for his projection, and his upside.

But why Nimmo? One thing the Mets don’t have much of in the minor league system is left-handed bats. This is nothing new. The last home-grown lefty power-hitter before Ike and Duda, was Darryl Strawberry, and a decade before that, “The Hammer”, the late great John Milner. That’s a pretty sporadic legacy, and there is no reason why that has to be so. After enduring the disappointment of players like Jeromy Burnitz, and Mike Carp, and Rico Brogna, the Mets need to get serious about adding more Ike’s and Big Duda’s.

Nimmo is a tall (6’3″), athletic outfielder with a very good arm, above average speed, a sweet lefty swing, and projects to someday develop into a power-hitter. He has very strong hands, and excellent hand-eye coordination, and as his body fills out, his long arms and long legs will enable him to drive the ball hard to all fields. I believe that’s referred to as “five-tool” potential. There weren’t too many of those in this years draft, and if you are looking for a LH hitter/CF type, there was no one that graded out like Nimmo. His skillset was fairly unique to this draft, so the Mets were actually smart to take him when they could, knowing the pitching depth in the draft would work in their favor. From the Supplemental round on, they could go for pitching, pitching and more pitching, which is just what they did.

And so, it is without further delay, that I would like to officially name Brandon Nimmo the MMO 2012 Mets #5 Prospect.

Here’s some Brandon Nimmo video.

Check back on Monday when we unveil the #4 ranked player on our list!