I don’t know if anyone could have seen this coming, I believe, but Tomas Nido has been one of the biggest Mets surprises on the farm in the 2016 season.
Drafted out of Orangewood Christian School in the eighth round of the 2012 Draft, Nido was known by Baseball America for giving up his hit tool for selling out on above-average power potential.
Scouts were very correct on him selling out for power, which wasn’t a very wise approach, slashing a .246/.286/.336 in his first 218 games with 32 doubles, two triples, and 10 homers, and having to play in Brooklyn in both his age 19 and 20 years.
In addition, his catching was not very good to start, so he needed to work on that, especially with the arm strength that started out as just average as the above scouting report notes.
The underwhelming performance offensively and defensively caused many to lose faith in him as he entered his age-22 year in St. Lucie.
What a lot of people don’t realize is that baseball is and always will be a game of adjustments, and with Nido it was repetitions that proved to be key.
In his age-22 season, Nido was hitting .320/.351/.470 in High-A with 7 homers and 22 doubles. He has set career highs in hits and home runs, and a career low with a 11.9 percent strikeout percentage, 11.9 percent, a significant drop-off from last year’s 25.7 percent.
Nido abandoned selling out for power and instead opted for contact and trusting his natural strength. His isolated slugging is up to .150, which was .060 up from his previous four year average, and climbing.
With his natural power, it may get better as he develops and possibly evolve into 15 plus homers, which is superlative for a catcher.
The Florida State League, which he lead in batting average, is notoriously known for being harsh on offense.
Also, on defense, Nido has gone above and beyond, throwing out an excellent 40 percent of base runners and being a smooth receiver behind the dish. It looks like Nido has turned a corner.
Should Nido continue down this road of improvement, watch his stock rise as he works himself onto the Mets radar. The front office had a big decision to make as to either protecting Nido on the fourty man roster or leave him unprotected and possibly lose him in Rule V draft.
As you could guess, the Mets protected Nido, therefore, if his tools continue to improve and polish up, there may be a better heir to the Mets catching position than what Travis D’ Arnaud and Kevin Plawecki are indicating right now
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