Addressing Brandon Nimmo's early struggles with new approach

Brandon Nimmo is my favorite Met, with his wide range of offensive skills. With his combination of patience and power, he offered the possibility for the very rare .300/.400/.500 line. However, he and the Mets have made the choice to sacrifice patience for power. Theoretically, it’s a tradeoff worth making. While Nimmo himself channels Keith Hernandez and talks about RBIs when it comes to his offensive makeover, the possibility exists for a short-term decrease in walks while he shows power, ultimately leading to both a better OBP and a better ISO in the long run.

The issue is that he hasn’t displayed either patience or power in nearly four months now.

In 2024, Nimmo got off to a horrible start but his “x” stats all showed that he was hitting the ball hard, indicating that he was hitting in some bad luck. Sure enough, he started to turn his season around and by the All-Star break, he was one of the most productive hitters on the squad. But he had a horrible second half, one he’s carried over into 2025.

Dating back to last July, in his last 378 PA, Nimmo has a .193/.270/.329 line. That’s a 9.5 BB% and a .136 ISO. Lifetime, he has a 12.6 BB% and a .177 ISO. Even if you think we should discount what happened down the stretch in 2024 – there’s no firm date with when his plantar fasciitis began – he’s floundering here in 2025. He’s slashing .205/.253/.375, with a 6.3 BB% and a .170 ISO.

Yet once again we face that the results here in 2025 don’t jibe with how he’s hitting the ball. Nimmo’s Barrel % and Average Exit Velocity are both well above average and his Hard-Hit % is in the 92^nd percentile. His xBA is .252 (59 points above his actual AVG) while his xSLG is .465 – 90 points above his results to date. Additionally, Nimmo’s xwOBA is 51 points above his actual wOBA.

Even if you’re somehow not sold on “x” stats, Nimmo’s BABIP is just .212, which is 106 points below his lifetime average in the category.

It’s been painful for me to watch Nimmo’s at-bats this season. It seems he’s hitting too many balls on the ground but his 45.7 GB% is right around his career rate of 44.7% and significantly below his 50.5% mark in 2022, when he posted a 5.4 fWAR. Nimmo seems like he’s striking out too much yet his 20.0 K% is below his lifetime mark of 22.4%. It seems like he’s not hitting for power yet he’s on pace to hit 28 HR, which would be a career-best.

Count the above as reason 2,025 as for why you can’t trust the eye test.

Change is never easy and it’s made all the more difficult when the results don’t come close to matching the quality of contact, as what’s happening with Nimmo right now. Sure, there’s part of me that wishes he would cut back on his Swing%, which is currently at 51.2%, dwarfing his lifetime rate of 42.3%. Yet pitchers are throwing more strikes than ever to Nimmo and even if he still had an overall more-patient approach, his Swing% would be higher than those days when it was in the high 30s/low 40s.

Perhaps you think Nimmo should swing fewer times in the very first pitch of his at-bat. Previously, Nimmo had great success swinging at the first pitch when a reliever came into the game to face him. And while we don’t have breakdowns between starters and relievers – much less relievers brought on to face Nimmo – we do know that lifetime he has 24 of his 114 HR when swinging at and hitting the first pitch, regardless of who’s on the mound. Additionally, Nimmo’s .717 OPS when swinging at and making contact with the first pitch this year is better than his overall numbers. It doesn’t seem worthwhile to ask him to cut back on his early swings.

One thing that gives me hope with Nimmo’s new approach is that we saw last year what happened when Jeff McNeil changed his style, going from trying to hit ‘em where they ain’t to an emphasis of hitting the ball hard. McNeil went from a .569 OPS in the first half of the year to an .821 OPS after the All-Star break. He went from a 27.3 Hard-Hit% in the first three months of the year to a 36.1% rate in his final 190 PA.

While it’s against minor league pitching, we see McNeil has nine hits, with three going for extra-bases, here on his rehab stint, which seems to indicate that he’s still looking to hit the ball hard.

It’s not an exact match, what McNeil and Nimmo are trying to do, but it’s pretty close. It’s just that McNeil saw results much sooner. And even McNeil didn’t see them right away. He began to focus on hard contact in late June/early July and didn’t start seeing results until July 19, when he belted two homers.

It’s my belief that the new hitting approach for Nimmo will pay off in the end. Hopefully he can mimic early season Pete Alonso and trade some hard-hit grounders for hard-hit balls in the air. Also, it wouldn’t hurt if some of the balls he hits hard quit finding gloves. No one should be happy with the results Nimmo has had here recently. However, my expectation is that going forward, Nimmo’s actual numbers will be much closer to his “x” numbers and he’ll be a productive member of the lineup.