Brandon Nimmo is hot! Earlier this week Nimmo smashed two home runs with nine RBIs—in just one game! He rounded out the week with three home runs total, two doubles, and 11 RBIs. It is safe to say that Nimmo is breaking out of his early season slump, as he slashed .438/.474 /.895 from April 28 to May 5. His OPS is up to .699 on the year, raising it 123 points over the last week.
Nimmo is seeing the ball very well. Two of his three home runs came off of fastballs at the top of the zone. Nimmo was able to turn on both of these pitches quickly inducing an exit velocity of 105 and 102.2 mph. According to FanGraphs, Nimmo’s average exit velocity was 4 mph faster last week than the rest of the season. His hard rate for the season is at 59.4%, according to Baseball Savant, which places him in the 98 percentile of the MLB. In fact, he’s above the league average in xwOBA, xBA, average exit velocity, barrel % as well as his hard hit %. Additionally, Nimmo was able to increase his walks last week.
Another strength as of late for Nimmo is that he is making contact with pitches in the zone. Five of his seven hits came from pitches that were located in the zone. He managed to do all this with an improved BABIP.
For Nimmo’s outs, many of them came from him putting the ball into play. While he is still making an out, these are productive outs as they are making the defense make the out. Nimmo was able to decrease his strikeout rate over the course of last week. With doing so, he has a 17.5% strikeout rate for the season, placing him in the 73rd percentile for the MLB. Breaking down Nimmo’s outs, he hit two hard line outs and two fly outs, showing needed lift rather than rolling the ball over to the right side.
There’s plenty good coming from Nimmo as of late. There were grumblings from fans and analysts that Nimmo had lost touch with his old approach at the plate, often resulting in a higher OBP, and he’s now in an all or nothing position with his new approach, which focuses much more on power. How did Brandon Nimmo respond? By tying the Mets’s single game RBIs record. Nimmo was simply off to a slow start, and as of late has been a massive contributor to the Mets offense.
