Tony Tarasco joined the Mets as first base and outfield coach, and he’s working on improving the Mets defense. Tarasco has Brandon Nimmo working on his positioning:

Nimmo has identified his positioning in center field — he says he played too shallow last season — as an area for improvement.

“Now we put together his plan, him and I, and we go forward and start working on those things,” Tarasco said. “Not only his position and understanding his positioning, but how to read and understand the information that is pouring in for him and how to use it to his best, but also working the mechanics on making him a better center fielder, a better leader. All things once again that he is claiming and choosing to be better at.”

NYPost.com

The advantage of playing shallow is that you get to more low line drives that would otherwise fall as singles. Playing deeper allows on to cut off doubles and triples, and maybe rob a home run from time to time. It’s a more outs versus more damage trade-off.

Of course, it depends a lot on the hitter. I remember watching the 1990 ALCS between Boston and Oakland. Carney Lansford kept dumping line drives into shallow rightfield for singles. It was what Lansford had done all year, but rightfielder Tom Burnansky never tried to play shallow against the A’s third baseman. Lansford went seven for sixteen in the series. A number of those balls would have been caught if the outfield was properly positioned for the outfielder.

We’ll see how much Nimmo changes from batter to batter this season.