Francisco Lindor isn’t the problem.
The Mets should not prematurely trade one of their best players ahead of the August 3 Major League Baseball trade deadline despite the team being an abject disappointment this season.
They entered yesterday (Wednesday) afternoon’s game on the road against the Milwaukee Brewers with a record of 43-59 — on pace to win just 70 games in the 162-game schedule. Only the 41-62 Colorado Rockies had a worse mark among the 15 National League clubs.
The Mets weren’t expected to be a World Series contender, although they had the highest Opening Day payroll ($357.62 million) in MLB this season. Neither were they projected to be non-competitive.
(Note: The defending champion Los Angeles Dodgers actually had the highest payroll in MLB at $417.3 million when the season started, but because much of the money owed to the players on the collective 40-man payroll is deferred, only the money being paid this season was counted.)
Francisco Lindor isn’t the problem.
The five-time All-Star is not the singularly polarizing figure and primary cause of the Mets’ ongoing descent that some members of the media and segments of the fan base have made him out to be. The Mets won just 83 games and missed the playoffs last season even with outfielder Juan Soto in year one of his 15-year, $765 million deal, the most lucrative individual contract in sports history.
When Mets owner Steve Cohen and David Stearns, president of baseball operations, traded outfielder Brandon Nimmo to the Texas Rangers last November, dealt infielder/outfielder Jeff McNeil to the Oakland A’s last December and decided to part ways with free agent first baseman Pete Alonso, who signed a five-year, $155 million contract in December with the Baltimore Orioles, conjecture on radio airwaves and social media pointed fingers at Lindor for being the catalyst for the Mets leadership severing ties with three of the franchise’s longest tenured and popular white players.
Nimmo, 33, McNeil, 34, and Alonso, 31, were homegrown, drafted by the organization in 2011 (first round), 2013 (12th round), and 2016 (second round), respectively. Lindor, 32, who was born in Caguas, Puerto Rico and moved to Florida with his family when he was 12, was acquired from the Cleveland Indians by the Mets in a trade in January 2021 and signed a massive 10-year, $341 million contract two months later.
The unsubstantiated accusations are that Lindor’s supposed liberal political positions and those of his three aforementioned teammates, specifically Nimmo, were in conflict. The rumors were further fueled by the association between Lindor’s wife, Katia Reguero Lindor, and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. Mrs. Lindor, a classically trained violinist, served on Mamdani’s transition team and is an outspoken advocate of various progressive political candidates and policies.
Whether ideologies divided the clubhouse remains unclear, but what is not is Lindor’s performance on the field — with the exception of this season due to injuries. Lindor had appeared in only 43 of the Mets’ 102 games before yesterday’s game and in 172 at-bats was hitting .233 with six homers and 16 RBI, and an OPS of .717, well below his career OPS average of .815.
However, besides his 2015 rookie season and the 2020, 60-game COVID-19 shortened MLB season, Lindor has played in at least 152 games seven times, four of those seasons with the Mets. He has arguably outperformed his contract or at minimum equaled its value.
While he understandably would have embraced being named the Mets’ captain, an honor Cohen said in February during spring training he would not bestow on any player as long as he is the team’s owner, Lindor has been a leader without the official designation.
He should remain a cornerstone of the team for the time being while Cohen and Stearns surround him and Soto with the requisite talent to be a World Series challenger.
