Adopted: Brandon Nimmo

[Frayed Knot]

His stretch so far in PSL has been so hot that I have to fight the urge to look up his stats on a daily basis, something that's fun to do but ultimately not always the best way to follow a prospect's progress.

[Edgy MD]

B I N G O
N I M M O

[G-Fafif]

Promoted on the heels of his FSL All-Star season to date.

[Frayed Knot]

Giving Brandon his six-week check-up at AA:

Low BA so far, just .208 although had been below .200 for a chunk of his time there ... BUT
- the ridiculous walk rates are still there: his .331 OBA out of that .208 BA is about double the clip a normal hitter draws walks
- the power, if anything, has gotten better: 11 of his 25 hits at the AA level have gone for XBs and he already has more HRs in Bingo in 1/2 the number of PAs compared to Port St Lucie
- and his K-rates are about 1/3 lower than in 2013

[Guest themetfairy]

Last night Nimmo had a hit and a walk and scored twice. Normally that would be a great night of baseball, but during the slugfest in Trenton it was simply a nice contribution to a 10-7 win.



He and Thunder first baseman Peter O'Brien shared a laugh after Nimmo reached first on a single.

[Frayed Knot]

Frayed Knot wrote: Giving Brandon his six-week check-up at AA: Low BA so far, just .208 although had been below .200 for a chunk of his time there ... BUT - the ridiculous walk rates are still there: his .331 OBA out of that .208 BA is about double the clip a normal hitter draws walks - the power, if anything, has gotten better: 11 of his 25 hits at the AA level have gone for XBs and he already has more HRs in Bingo in 1/2 the number of PAs compared to Port St Lucie - and his K-rates are about 1/3 lower than in 2013

Last checked in in late July to find Nimmo off to a slow start in his AA stint.
Last 28 days (95 PAs): .296/.394/.457

Advance and adjust, then repeat as often as necessary.
Is playing his way into a possible 2015 ML debut. Not on Opening Day, I don't suspect, and too early to say at what point in the year or whether as a full-timer or just a fill-in w/an eye more towards 2016.
But it's a good pace for a guy who won't turn 22 until just before opening day.

For comparison purposes, Wright made his debut at 21 + 217 days, and with just under 400 games/1,700 PAs in the minors [91/406 in 'upper' minors (AA & AAA)]
NImmo, barring injuries, will end this year at about 340 games/1,450 PAs and, projecting to let's say Aug 1st of '15, will have closer to 450/1,800 under his belt and will be approx 9 months older than Sugarpants

[Benjamin Grimm]

Frayed Knot wrote: But it's a good pace for a guy who won't turn 22 until just before opening day.

Yeah, but there's a 28th birthday in his future.

I think, barring something exceptional happening, we're not likely to see many rookie prospects making Opening Day debuts. That delay-free-agency/delay-arbitration thing seems to be standard practice now, at least with the current Mets management. (I expect many other teams are doing this too?)

[Edgy MD]

Well, it's probably more standard that the high-end prospects won't see opening day, but if the Eric Campbells win a job in camp, bam! it's theirs.

But lookie d'Arnaud, he got to start the season. If you get September, you get April too, I guess.

[G-Fafif]

Brandon headed for the Arizona Fall League.

[G-Fafif]

Named this year's Sterling Award winner for St. Lucie.

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

Can't wait till the new owners change that award's name.

[G-Fafif]

The learning continued in AFL ball, per Davidoff in the Pest.

[G-Fafif]

While completing transfer of adoption papers for Cam Maron to the prospect page at the Oester Bar in Cincinnati, I noticed I misposted this Brandon Nimmo article from September in the Cam thread. So for those who might have missed how 2011's No. 1 draft pick was looking in Double-A...

Nimmo earned Florida State League midseason All-Star honors while with St. Lucie before his promotion to Binghamton. Combined between the two levels, Nimmo this season has scored 97 runs, driven in 51 runs, hit 21 doubles, nine triples, 10 home runs and logged an on-base percentage of .396 to go along with a .429 slugging percentage. "We're very pleased with where Brandon is right now," DePodesta said in an email. "Since this is just his age 21 season, we're very happy that he has spent the second half of the season in AA and is already making the adjustments to succeed at that level. For a guy who didn't play with the amateur competition in somewhere like Florida or Southern California, he has been very quick to make adjustments at each and every level." Big things ahead Nimmo has just begun to tap into his power potential with added muscle this season on his 6-foot-3 frame. He has as many home runs this season as his previous seasons combined. B-Met manager Pedro Lopez has put Nimmo in the leadoff spot 41 times in 61 games, but he believes his future will include batting near the middle of the lineup. "I'm almost positive that's going to be his role whenever he gets to the big leagues," Lopez said. "... He's got some pop. He drive the ball to all fields." Now that he's no longer chasing big brother, Nimmo has has found other driving forces. "Now I'm chasing my personal dream of being a major-league baseball player," Nimmo said. "Once I got drafted it's all about leaving no regrets that I gave it everything that I had. I like to think that I'm not only making a name for myself, and I'm trying to uphold a reputation of my family — obviously I want the Nimmo name to be a well-known name and I want to honor my parents and my brother — but also just the fact that people hear Wyoming and they chuckle." Nimmo bristles at the idea that baseball does not count or is not played at the same level in Wyoming as in other parts of the country. "In Cheyenne, baseball continues to get bigger and bigger and kids dreams continue to get bigger and bigger," Lain said. "People follow him and not just in our program. People across the state follow Brandon." Mets fans all over the Northeast also follow Nimmo. On the road or at home, he does interviews and he stops to takes pictures and talk with folks who are eagerly awaiting his arrival in New York. Their expectations never seem to overwhelm him. He greets them all with a smile. Then again, it shouldn't be surprising considering Nimmo embraced his brother's mantle as the guy paving the way for an entire region of baseball players. "If anybody out there that's from where I am back in Wyoming — and I know that South Dakota is similar to that and North Dakota — if they have a dream that they want to be a professional baseball player, a major-league baseball player," Nimmo says, "I want to be one of those guys that broke through the barriers and said, 'If you work hard enough. If you make the sacrifices and have no regrets about what you do. You work as hard as you can, then dreams can come true.' "

[MFS62]

Two possibilities:
1) We saw it there, but were too polite to mention it.
2) Cam wasn't a highly rated prospect, so nobody read that thread.

Not sure which it was.

Later

[G-Fafif]

I am now morally obligated to root for Cam to hit a solo home run off some transient Met reliever when the Mets are up by nine runs in the ninth inning someday just so I can say, "See...?"

[G-Fafif]

Brandon was among the first cuts from the major league camp. He'll be 22 on March 27. He's been in pro ball since 1966, or so it seems.

[G-Fafif]

Left a game last week with a knee "pinch," later termed not serious. Back in the lineup of late.

This from MetsBlog:

Nimmo, who had been hitting .250 with a .750 OPS before the game, was the team’s first-round pick, No. 13 overall, in the 2011. Baseball America recently ranked him the No. 46 overall prospect in baseball, and the best hitting prospect in the team’s farm system. “His game still needs refining, but Nimmo’s on-base skills and quick hands give him the potential to be a solid Major Leaguer in time,” MLB.com’s Jonathan Mayo wrote in January.

[Frayed Knot]

John Sickels: [Nimmo is] hitting .372 in his last 10 games and .304/.375/.457 overall for Double-A Binghamton. He played half of 2014 in the Eastern League and it will be interesting to see how quickly the Mets move him up to Triple-A if he remains this hot.

[Vic Sage]

screw AAA. He can draw walks so that apparently makes him a useful major league RFer right now.

[G-Fafif]

An Eastern League All-Star! A Futures Game participant! Not yet eligible for full AARP membership!

And mentioned here and there as the prospect the Mets would be willing to part with.

[Benjamin Grimm]

I'm starting to think of Brandon Nimmo as Shawn Abner.

[Edgy MD]

Good. We could use a Kevin McReynolds on this team.

[Frayed Knot]

Promoted to AAA

[Vic Sage]

Edgy MD wrote: Good. We could use a Kevin McReynolds on this team.

no, not again.

[Edgy MD]

Went 1-2 with a RS, an RBI, two walks, and a SB.

That's a very Nimmo debut!!

[dgwphotography]

Vic Sage wrote: Edgy MD wrote: Good. We could use a Kevin McReynolds on this team. no, not again.

I believe Edgy is referring to the Kevin McReynolds we had for the first four years of his Met tenure, not the puffy malcontent who came after...

[dgwphotography]

Brandon has quite the beautiful goatee growth:

[Vic Sage]

dgwphotography wrote: Vic Sage wrote: Edgy MD wrote: Good. We could use a Kevin McReynolds on this team. no, not again. I believe Edgy is referring to the Kevin McReynolds we had for the first four years of his Met tenure, not the puffy malcontent who came after...

yeah, i wasn't that crazy about the first McReynolds either.

Look, I know he was a very good player, but he wasn't a great player. He was a .270-280/20-25hr/85-95rbi/70-80r guy with a decent arm and a decent glove, who ran ok. He did everything fairly well, but he didn't do anything great. Plus he was a whining malcontent and a dog, and the next time he runs hard after a ball will be the first time . Plus we traded future MVP Kevin Mitchell to get him and only got a washed up Bret Saberhagen when we finally had enough of him. Plus i had a pathological hate for him on a genetic level which is otherwise hard to explain except that, for the same reason we've just had a Wilmer Flores love affair, with him demonstrating how much he cares about staying a Met, the sense that McReynolds had no real interest or enthusiasm for being here and would much rather have been huntin' possum in Arkansas just infuriated me.

[Edgy MD]

Vic Sage wrote: Plus he was a whining malcontent and a dog.

I missed this. More typical is that they failure of the Mets to return to the World Series made him a convenient scapegoat and whipping boy on WFAN. As if it was his fault that Carter and Hernandez aged and Gooden and Strawberry used.

Vic Sage wrote: ...would much rather have been huntin' possum in Arkansas just infuriated me.

The source of this is usually a single quote in the 1988 playoffs saying that he either goes to the World Series or goes hunting (no mention of possum) and either way he's good, meaning to answer a question about whether he will be affected by pressure. "No," he was trying to say, "I'm not going to succumb to pressure, because I've achieved a focused detachment from my desires."

This, of course, got turned into "McReynolds doesn't care" by scapegoating media. The fact that he had been a rip-roaring force in the previous few games of the NLCS, including scoring the winning run in game one — stealing one from the indomitable Orel Hershiser by running through the brick wall that was Mike Scoscia — was quickly forgotten.



The McReynolds Myth needs to die.

[Edgy MD]

Back to the point, Nimmo batted last today in Las Vegas for Wally Backman. He got pissed, and went out and went 3-4 with a walk and his first AAA homer.

A 17-hit night for the 51s