Gimenez finds his form with Rumble Ponies

After logging five hits through his first seven games of the season, the Mets' No. 2 prospect played up to his profile with the Double-A Rumble Ponies on Thursday night.
Andrés Giménez went 3-for-4 with a home run, two doubles, a walk, two runs scored and an RBI in Binghamton's 7-5 win over Erie at UMPC Park. The shortstop came into the night batting .161 with two extra-base hits.

In the first inning, the left-handed hitter followed Sam Haggerty's leadoff home run with an opposite-field double. Another dinger off the bat of Will Toffey -- New York's 16th-ranked prospect -- plated Gimenez two batters later.
MLB.com's No. 55 overall prospect launched a no-doubter to right field off SeaWolves starter Alex Faedo in the second. The ball sailed high over the fence, landed across Holland Street and prompted a chase for the Venezuela native's first Double-A home run ball.
That dinger may be an indication that Gimenez can provide more pop than his 35-grade power suggests. In 2017, when Gimenez totaled 17 extra-base hits -- four of which were homers -- he earned an .084 isolated slugging percentage (ISO), a power-measuring stat calculated by the difference between a batter's slugging percentage and batting average. As a 19-year-old last season, however, the 5-foot-11, 161-pound Gimenez went for extra bases 40 times and posted a .128 ISO. So the signs point to him being able to add more power as he matures.
Gameday box score
Gimenez emphasized that possibility when -- after striking out swinging in the fourth and walking in the sixth -- he laced another double in the eighth, this time to left-center. It capped a performance reminiscent of the 20-year-old's 2018 campaign in which he pushed his way into the Eastern League by stealing 28 bases and hitting .282 with a .780 OPS in 85 games for Class A Advanced St. Lucie.
The Mets have been able to be aggressive with Gimenez, who signed for $1.2 million in 2015 and made his full-season debut three years later at 18, because of how advanced much of his game is. His above-average speed and arm seem to work well at short, where his hands and instincts are strengths. And his approach at the plate has improved; Gimenez's strikeout rate dropped by more than five percentage points over 2017-18.

Harol Gonzalez (1-0) held the SeaWolves to three earned runs on four hits and a walk in six innings to earn the win. He struck out eight. Stephen Villines picked up his third save by tossing a scoreless ninth.
Faedo (0-1), the Tigers' No. 10 prospect, took the loss, having surrendered seven runs -- all earned -- on nine hits and a walk over four innings. The Erie bullpen blanked Binghamton the rest of the way, striking out 10 batters in the last five frames.