We all know Brandon Nimmo as the guy who has a penchant for drawing walks, hitting occasional homers, working the count and smiling. His ability to change and adapt at the Major League level, however, might be his most impressive skill.

Back in 2016, the knock on Nimmo from his prospect blurb on FanGraphs was that he was too selective and that his lack of power meant that pitchers could “live on the edges of the zone without the threat of doing real damage.” So towards the end of 2017 and 2018, Nimmo simply became more aggressive in the zone than he was in the minors and added legitimate home run power. He hit .262/.397/.464 over that time frame and added 22 home runs for good measure.

Suddenly, he went form a non-impact prospect and turned into a legit starter. I went back and saw some of the top outfield prospects from 2016-2017. Among Andrew Benintendi, Victor Robles, Clint Frazier, Austin Meadows, Lewis Brinson, Mickey Moniak, Corey Ray, Blake Rutherford, Hunter Renfroe, Anthony Alford and Albert Almora, would you take any of them over Nimmo? I think the answer is a resounding no.

Despite Nimmo’s breakout, some were critical of his strikeout rates and his occasional passivity with pitches in the zone. Personally, I was happy with the .260/.380/.450 hitter the Mets had and did not want to change what was working. Sure, I would not have minded fewer strikeouts, but I also did not want to see him to change his approach to start chasing pitches out of the zone just to avoid strikeouts or just try to make contact for the sake of making contact. I’m not saying there aren’t scenarios where contact is beneficial, but a “contact for the sake of contact” approach is pretty much what Robinson Cano is trying to achieve and I think most can agree that it is close to unwatchable when his softly hit ground ball does not find a hole. The key word is trying because sometimes, he is not even making contact.

Instead, Nimmo “simply” changed his approach to cut down on his strikeouts and be more aggressive in the zone, while also maintaining his elite walk rates and chase rates. We now have a 163 game sample (I am annoyed at not writing this one game sooner) where Nimmo is hitting .286/.401/.460 with a .378 wOBA and 144 wRC+. In those 163 games, Nimmo’s strikeout rate is at 19.8% while also maintaining a 14.3% walk rate. He has not chased more in this stretch as evidenced by his 21% chase rate in that time but he is now swinging at 67.7% of pitches in the zone. He has been making contact on 86.5% of those pitches while also maintaining an 8.4% whiff rate. For comparison, in 2018 Nimmo swung at 62.3% of pitches in the zone and is making contact on them 83.6% of the time.

These may not seem huge but they seemingly explain why his strikeout has gone from the 27-29% range to below 20%. His contact on pitches out of the zone also increased, but he hit .146 with a slugging percentage of .244 on pitches he chased in 2021. So maybe strikeout rate decreasing can partially be attributed to his increased contact on pitches outside of the zone but his increase in batting average cannot. This is why I mentioned that I did not want Nimmo to simply try and avoid strikeouts. He really does next to nothing when he chases pitches. If he had tried expanding the zone as some suggested, then he would have just turned into a .350 OBP hitter.

Just to get an idea of how good Nimmo’s control of the plate has gotten, since the start of 2020, here is the list of MLB players with a lower chase rate than 21% and who swing at more than 65% of pitches in the zone: Brandon Nimmo. I’m not suggesting that Nimmo is better than someone like Juan Soto or Mike Trout (both are players who chase less than Nimmo). Nimmo has far less in-game power than those two but he is seemingly aware that he has to recognize pitches in the zone and capitalize on them to make up for his relatively lack of power.

I mentioned that his ability to change and adapt might be his best skill and I truly mean it. Nimmo has seemingly taken a weak part of his game and fixed it easily on two occasions now. Major League Baseball is not that simple, which is why I joked about how “simply” he did it. It would be like watching a NFL game and saying the Bills just have to simply stop Patrick Mahomes. It might be interesting if Nimmo decided to cut down on his ground ball rate next since he can seemingly fix parts of his game without much effort. What is for certain is that his profile has changed drastically twice. First in 2016 and then in 2018. As such, we should also change our expectations.