Weekly Statistical Spotlight: Brandon Nimmo

This new series, Statistical Spotlight, will feature a different Met each week highlighting the player’s performance for that week’s games. This week’s feature is Brandon Nimmo and his performance for games from May 5 through May 11.

Brandon Nimmo had an okay week hitting, slashing for .222/.444/.556 with an OPS of 1.000, smacking two home runs. Pulling data from Baseball Savant, I created a scatter plot of Nimmo’s plate appearances for this week’s games.

The map below is from a catcher’s perspective. All the gray dots are balls that Nimmo did not make contact with, so they are either balls, strikes, or swinging strikes. All the colored dots are pitches that Nimmo made contact with. The hit distance is recorded in feet. Red balls are the furthest hit balls, while blue balls are the shortest hit balls. 

Looking at his plate appearances, Nimmo was driving the ball the furthest when the ball was middle in. Many of his contacted pitches came from this region, regardless of the pitcher’s throwing arm. He also made solid contact with balls that were up and away, driving many of these pitches for over 200 feet. Nimmo struggled with balls that were down in the zone, particularly down and in. While he did make contact with these pitches, he was not able to drive the ball.

It will be interesting to see how this data will pan out for the week to come. Will Nimmo make adjustments to raise the ball from down and in pitches, or will pitchers capitalize by hammering away down and in to create ground balls? An educated guess; Nimmo will combine both, continuing to crank balls middle in while adjusting his approach at the plate by looking to lift balls down and in.

The Mets’ outfielder did suffer a minor injury during Saturday’s game, as he is being listed as day-to-day. Overall, on the season, he has arguably been the team’s most valuable player, tied with Francisco Lindor in fWAR. Not to mention, Nimmo’s hard-hit rate, average exit velocity, among several other analytical measurements are 0n pace to be the highest of his career. His .779 OPS on the season thus far is not the most flattering number, however, expect that number too steadily rise if he continues to make the contact and play as he has to begin the season.

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