A Big Steaming Crap on Nimmo

[Edgy MD]

After Brandon Nimmo had something of a breakthrough season, going .263 / .404 / .483 // .887 over 535 plate appearances, I was distressed and dismayed while chilling over at FanGraphs to see that Steamer predicts more playing time but a big fallback from him in 2019: .240 / .352 / .397 // .749 over 627 plate appearances.

This will obviously be revisited at the time we put up our Notions of Nineteen threads, and .749 is no disaster, but what is Steamer seeing? That's something like a two-win difference in fWAR.

[smg58]

I noticed that as well, and it was talked about on one of the threads here. The complete disappearance of his power at age 26 makes zero sense at all to me.

[Frayed Knot]

Particularly odd since I thought I heard that he was one of those high-pct high exit-velo guys.
Maybe I misremembering since I don't pay of ton of attention to that stuff but, aside from being made to face more LHPs, not sure what would account for a big predicted decline.

[Benjamin Grimm]

I haven't really paid much attention to this kind of stuff. In the past, how accurate have their forecasts proven to be?

[Fman99]

Like they fucking know.

[Edgy MD]

If I were fWAR, I would guess one thing that would suggest a decline would be if he far exceeded my prediction of last year.

Also, who knows how they calculate in the injury factor. He had a partially collapsed lung in July of 2017, and suffered a hamstring strain at the top of that season and most relevantly, one more at the end of 2018. Maybe the math doesn't distinguish a strain from a pull, or a partial collapse from a collapse.

[Centerfield]

Only 4 HR in the second half last year.

To the naked eye it seemed like he was making less solid contact after the all star break. Even if the OPS doesn’t reflect it. I was thinking the hand might be hurt more than he was letting on.

I don’t know. I still love the guy. I think he’s going to be terrific. I’m glad we didn’t trade him (along with whoever else) for Realmuto.

[smg58]

Benjamin Grimm wrote: I haven't really paid much attention to this kind of stuff. In the past, how accurate have their forecasts proven to be?

That's a perfectly fair question.

[A Boy Named Seo]

In the first half, Nimmo was a darling in all the Baseball Savant stats (barrels, hard hit %, exit velo). Looks like he did have a pretty hard fall. He ended up #95 in avg exit velo in all of MLB (not bad!) and his 42% hard-hit percentage was good enough 75th overall. Everything else dropped pretty hard and his statcast expected batting average for last year was .231.