The NL leader in Adjusted Weighted Runs Created in 2018 was Christian Yelich, who posted an impressive 166 wRC+. He won the NL MVP award.
Paul Goldschmidt ranked third in wRC+. Anthony Rendon was fourth, Matt Carpenter was fifth, and Freddie Freeman was sixth. All of them were talked about as MVP candidates during the season.
And then there’s the NL player who ranked second in wRC+ in 2018: New York Mets outfielder Brandon Nimmo. He also finished second in OPS+, if you prefer that measure.
Nimmo didn’t receive any MVP support last season. That’s partially because his team was really, really awful last year, and it’s partially because while Nimmo had a fine season at the plate, he didn’t contribute much in any other area: he isn’t a great baserunner, and he’s not an elite defensive player.
And Nimmo’s traditional batting numbers aren’t nearly as impressive as the other players posting impressive mentioned. Here’s a table of the NL leaders in wRC+:
Player
|
R
|
HR
|
RBI
|
BA
|
wRC+
|
Christian Yelich
|
118
|
36
|
110
|
.326
|
166
|
Brandon Nimmo
|
77
|
17
|
47
|
.263
|
149
|
Paul Goldschmidt
|
95
|
33
|
83
|
.290
|
145
|
Anthony Rendon
|
88
|
24
|
92
|
.308
|
140
|
Matt Carpenter
|
111
|
36
|
81
|
.257
|
138
|
Freddie Freeman
|
94
|
23
|
98
|
.309
|
137
|
The other men have traditional batting lines that said ‘elite hitter.’ Brandon Nimmo has a traditional batting line that suggests "middle infielder during the 1990’s."
Brandon Nimmo wasn’t a serious MVP candidate, and he shouldn’t have been an MVP candidate. But there is good evidence that the Mets has quietly joined the echelon of the game’s best hitters.
Let’s look a little closer at his numbers. Here’s an extended 2018 stat summary:
AB
|
R
|
H
|
BA
|
HR
|
RBI
|
SB
|
OBP
|
SLG
|
427
|
77
|
111
|
.260
|
17
|
47
|
9
|
.402
|
.482
|
Those numbers are not impressive. With the exception of Nimmo’s on-base percentage, there is little here to suggest that Nimmo belongs in the conversation with Paul Goldschmidt and Freddie Freeman.
The first clarifier is that Nimmo plays in a terrible park for left-handed hitters. According to Baseball Prospectus’ Runs Factor metric, left-handed batters in CitiField have suffered the second-most oppressive ballpark in baseball this year, bettering only the Marlins Park outcomes for right-handed hitters.
Rank
|
Team
|
Side
|
Runs Factor
|
56
|
PIT
|
RHB
|
90
|
57
|
DET
|
LHB
|
90
|
58
|
MIA
|
LHB
|
88
|
59
|
NYM
|
LHB
|
87
|
60
|
MIA
|
RHB
|
84
|
Nimmo’s split stats reflect this divide: he shows up as a much better hitter away from CitiField than at home:
Splits
|
PA
|
BA
|
OBP
|
SLG
|
OPS
|
Home
|
249
|
.229
|
.378
|
.438
|
.815
|
Away
|
279
|
.288
|
.423
|
.522
|
.945
|
Nimmo’s OPS split matches exactly the Runs Factor that Baseball Prospectus credits CitiField with. If you multiple Nimmo’s .945 road OPS by .87, you get .822, which is almost exactly what his actual OPS in CitiField was. That’s not good math, of course, but it’s nice when it works out.
Nimmo’s other flaw as a hitter is that he can’t hit lefthanders:
Splits
|
PA
|
BA
|
OBP
|
SLG
|
OPS
|
vs RHP
|
377
|
.271
|
.422
|
.522
|
.943
|
vs. LHP
|
151
|
.234
|
.351
|
.391
|
.742
|
Nimmo’s probably not as bad at hitting southpaws as he looks. if we assume that a portion of that .742 OPS is CitiField related, we can cut him some slack on his trouble with wrong-siders.
So Brandon Nimmo is an imperfect player. And he is also…understood in a certain light…an extremely interesting player. Maybe he can’t field or run all that great, and maybe he struggles a little bit against lefties, but Nimmo absolutely crushes righthanded pitchers. I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but most pitchers in baseball are right-handed.
And Nimmo is under team control for the next four seasons.
Which brings us to the most interesting aspect of Brandon Nimmo’s existence as a baseball player: he plays for the New York Mets.
* * *
The Mets are an organization that has been hamstrung by fiscal ineptitude. They have compounded that ineptitude by making organizational decisions that would have likely bankrupted any team that didn’t play in the richest market in American sports.
I should pull my punches more. Or maybe I am pulling my punches: the Mets of recent years have had an incredible opportunity. Blessed with a deep roster of incredibly talented pitchers, and blessed again contending in an NL East division that had one contending team (Washington) and three teams in stages of deep rebuild (Philadelphia, Miami, and Atlanta), the Mets had a terrific chance to have a mini-dynasty. For all that fortune, they’ve managed one improbable World Series run, a Wild Card loss, and two consecutive losing seasons. That’s not nothing, but it’s not what it could’ve been, either.
The Mets window of contention almost certainly closed last year: Atlanta joined the Nationals as a legitimately great team, and the Phillies aren’t far behind them. So how have the Mets adjusted to this? What has happened this offseason?
- They hired an agent to be their GM. They hired...to lead their organization...someone with no background ever working within a baseball organization. They picked someone whose central work experience is in an industry that extracts money from baseball teams.
- They signed Jeurys Familia, a mid-level closer with a less-than-pleasant personal history, to a three-year, $30 million-dollar contract.
- They signed catcher Wilson Ramos to a two-year contract. I don’t have a problem with this move, but I thought I’d list it. They traded away Kevin Plawecki, which seems short-sighted, but this wasn’t egregious.
- They traded a couple prospects and deadweight contracts for an elite closer (Diaz) and a very good second baseman (Cano) who is a) 36-year old, b) coming off a PED suspension, and c) about to enter the bad years of a mega-contract. I don’t mind this deal either, but I’m a big fan of Robinson Cano.
- They signed Jed Lowrie, a thirty-five year old infielder coming off his best season, to a contract they had originally written for Ben Zobrist a few years ago. They found it stuffed in a drawer and ironed out the wrinkles.
- They acquired Keon Broxton (36.6% strikeout rate, career) for a team that already has a problem with strikeouts, and a glut of outfielders.
The Mets, in short, are going all-in. They’re pushing all their chips forward, with little consideration for what happens after 2019. They’re signing a bunch of old-ish and straight-up-old-old players to bolster a team that finished fourth in the division, despite having a pitcher that gave them a quality start every time his turn in the rotation rolled around.
This is a winning strategy, if your vision of winning is less about what happens on a baseball diamond, and more about throwing paint at a wall and hoping someone will call it a Picasso. Maybe the Mets will win this year, but I think it’s much more likely that Cespedes will be catching every third game by June, because that’ll be the only thing the Mets haven’t tried.
Understand: I am not usually so brazenly critical of anyone. It is my sincere belief is that most of you reading this article know more about baseball than I know, and it is my belief that most of the people entrusted with pulling the levers and twisting the knobs of major league teams know more than all of us.
The Mets are an exception. I think there is a very good chance that the people in charge of the Mets have no clear idea how good a player Brandon Nimmo is.
The record suggests as much. On July 24th of last year, Nimmo had a triple-slash line of .253/.374/.485. His on-base percentage was the best percentage on the team, by about forty points. His slugging percentage was about .002 off from being the best on the team.
The Mets dropped him seventh in the lineup the next three games. Then they tried him in the sixth slot. Then first, for a couple days. Then ninth. Then sixth. Over the last two months of the season, Nimmo spent more time hitting 6th or lower in the batting order than he did hitting 1st or 2nd.
How is that possible? How does that happen?
How, in this day and age, did the Mets come to the conclusion that Brandon Nimmo was a problem to their stuttering offense? This is a player that every advanced metric was already identifying as one of the best hitters in the league. This is a player, too, that happened to be outpacing all of his teammates in on-base and slugging percentage. Why did the Mets start rolling dice on where he was in the batting order? Why was he the one getting dropped? Were they only looking at his batting average? Is that how the Mets make lineup decisions, on batting average?
I don’t know. But this team has done so many things that fly in the face of common sense that the possibility can’t be ignored. The Mets really might not know what they have in Brandon Nimmo.
And if I were a G.M., I’d be making a real effort to find that out.
This is, in a way, a perfect storm for picking up a criminally overlooking a player. You have:
- A player whose traditional statistics, deflated by a pitcher’s park and reduced further by batting seventh or eighth for most of the summer, don’t look nearly as good as they are,
- A player who has one dimension of positive ability (torches right-handers) and a lot of neutral or negative markers,
- A new management group that seems eager to make their mark by shelling out big dollars for older name players and moving young players to make space, and
- A team that has a lot of guys jostling for a few spots in the outfield.
I’d be making offers. If I were a GM of a baseball team, I’d be working day and night to find out what the Mets are really looking for, and I’d offer it to them on a silver plate. Do you want a deep bullpen, like they've got in Colorado and the Bro? We can do that. Do they want a proper defensive centerfielder? We have one. Do they want another 100-mph thrower to damage? Tough, but we can swing it.
What do we want back? I don’t know…how about that Nimmo kid? He seems to have a little pop. Maybe we can find a platoon for him. Whaddasay? We got a deal?
Dave Fleming is a writer living in western Virginia. He welcomes comments, questions, and suggestions here and at dfleming1986@yahoo.com