Back to the city where it all began Francisco Lindor for the first time since it was negotiated with the Mets Coming from the then Cleveland Indians, the shortstop begins the three-game series against his former team amid a disappointing start to the season.
Lindor, accustomed to being one of the best shortstops in the game — which is why New York traded for and then signed him to a 10-year, $341 million contract before the start of the 2021 season — has been anything but. at the base. in his fourth season with the Mets.
Despite two fantastic seasons in 2022 and 2023, Lindor has struggled a lot since arriving at Queens, including a difficult first season that included injuries. With his current struggles so evident, it begs the question whether the pressure he faces to play in New York is sometimes too much.
“I always had pressure. There’s no one out there who wants it more than me,” he said. “I always had pressure to try to be the best possible version of Francisco Lindor. This is good pressure. I love that pressure. Not a day goes by where I say, ‘You know what, today I just want to be a bad baseball player.’ That never crossed my mind.
“It’s just baseball, you know. You have ups and downs, you have good times, you have bad times – it’s part of the journey. You have to understand it, you have to embrace it, you have to stay the course, you have to keep climbing day by day.”
In his career, Lindor generally got off to a slow start at the plate, which could have explained his .083 batting average in March and .210 in April.
However, in 183 at-bats (and more than a quarter of the season as we approach Memorial Day weekend), the 30-year-old is still slashing just .197/.273/.355 with seven home runs, eight doubles, 22 RBI and .628 OPS, until very recently, in the middle of the lineup.
Not exactly the Lindor-type numbers Cleveland fans saw for six seasons and what Mets fans hoped to see when he joined the club. When asked how his numbers so far are different from him and a player of his caliber, Lindor agreed, thought briefly about it and altered his answer.
“I agree… actually it is. It’s part of it. It’s part of the journey,” he said. “I don’t like it and I won’t be there [at the end of the season]. I will continue to climb. I will do my best day after day to keep climbing.”
Few players work as hard or take as much pride in their work as Lindor, as evidenced by his commitment, and almost demand, to play almost every day throughout his career. So when he says he’s doing everything he can to get out of the crisis, he means it.
Regardless of his individual stats, Lindor’s main focus is and always has been to win and help his team win in any way he can.
“I’m not a numbers guy. So I just focus on winning and trying to find ways to win and the numbers will be there at the end of the year,” he said. “It turns out I don’t have enough sample at the moment, so everything looks bigger than it is. I feel like I’ve had some great at-bats over the last week and a half, but the results aren’t showing.
“But the process is great. I trust my coaches, my teammates a lot – we have a great group here – and I’m working on things. It’s just a matter of raising the batting average a little. I think if I was scoring 30 points more [it] It wouldn’t sound the same.”
While his optimistic outlook and overall feeling about himself and his team are respectable, the Mets enter the series with the AL Central-leading Guardians at 21-25, having lost seven of their last 10 games.
All of this isn’t up to Lindor, but if the shortstop really wants to help his team win, he’ll need to start finding his groove at the plate. Perhaps facing his former team in a familiar environment could help achieve that.
