More left for Lindor
Star switch hitter swinging fine, but only from right side
The cheering at Citi Field did not quite have the same effect on Francisco Lindor that the Philadelphia ovations did for Trea Turner last August, but the switch-hitting shortstop at least showed some signs of life at the plate during the just-completed homestand.
After entering last Friday’s game with an unsightly OPS of .380, Lindor had a more respectable .703 OPS during the six games in Queens.
More importantly, the Mets continued to change the tenor of their season, winning five of the six games to go over .500 after a miserable 0-5 start to the season.
But issues remain for the team’s highest-paid player, who is in the third year of a 10-year, $341 million extension.
“He’s gone through rough stretches over the course of his career at various points,’’ president of baseball operations David Stearns said this week. “And I think this is one of those things that if it happened in June, we’d notice it, but it wouldn’t be perhaps quite as magnified as it is right now.”
And it would be even more magnified if the Mets hadn’t started winning games, winning the fans over with lategame heroics and strong pitching.
Still, with Lindor having moved from the two-hole to third in the lineup for the past eight games, the Mets need to get more out of him — particularly from the left side.
As Stearns noted, “From the left side, he’s off to a slow start, and from the right side, he’s swinging it pretty well.”
To Stearns’ point, through 18 games, Lindor has just a .352 OPS in 63 plate appearances as a lefty, compared to .810 in 21 plate appearances as a righthanded hitter.
That’s not what the Mets signed up for when they acquired Lindor in a trade from Cleveland prior to the 2021 season and promptly extended him.
But the 30-year-old has also hit into some bad luck, with Statcast showing Lindor has an expected batting average of .274, while his actual average is .151, the sixth-lowest in the majors among qualified hitters.
There’s been very little power, as well, which is part of the reason his .478 OPS is better than just 10 players.
Stearns, though, remains confident Lindor will return to form soon.
“He’s a really good hitter,” Stearns said. “Physically, he’s in a very good spot. And I expect he’s gonna snap out of this.”
The change of attitude at Citi Field, which was endorsed by owner Steve Cohen and to which Lindor responded by saying the ovations “fills my heart,’’ didn’t flip the script to the extent that it did in Philadelphia, when Turner, who entered an August homestand with a .657 OPS in his first 107 games of an 11-year, $300 million deal, almost immediately went on a tear.
In the nine games starting with the beginning of the homestand, Turner went 16-for-35 with an OPS of 1.287 and helped the Phillies get to the NLCS.
The Mets, who began their turnaround on the road with back-to-back series wins in Cincinnati and Atlanta, will now look to keep it going on a road trip that begins Friday against the Dodgers in Los Angeles.