Tomas Nido Proves Hard work Pays Off For Mets

By Christopher Saunders

tomas-nido_ny-metsDrafted out of Orangewood Christian School in the 8th round of the 2012 Draft, Tomas 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, 2 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 when he was assigned to the Mets training complex in Port St. Lucie, Florida at age 22.

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 twenty-two 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 forty man roster or leave him unprotected and possibly lose him in Rule five draft.

As you could guess the Mets protected Tomas Nido, therefore, if his tools continue to improve and polish up he may be a better heir in their catching depth chart than what d’arnaud and Kevin Plawecki are indicating right now

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