Francisco Lindor turned in an MVP-type performance to help the New York Mets return to the postseason.
The New York Mets are headed back to the postseason, and simply put, they wouldn’t be here without Francisco Lindor. While they managed to get by during his late-September absence, it’s been clear all year that Lindor is vital to the team’s success. The fact that he made it back on the field for the last few games of the regular season is a significant source of optimism as the team begins its Wild Card series in Milwaukee.
Statistically, this season was Lindor’s best since joining the Mets and among the best of his career. While playing an excellent shortstop, he hit .272/.344/.496 with 29 stolen bases, 32 home runs, a 136 wRC+, and 7.6 fWAR. That wRC+ was the best mark of his career, and the fWAR ranks second, slightly trailing his similarly excellent 2018 season when he was still with Cleveland. If not for Shohei Ohtani’s 50/50 season, Lindor might be getting talked about as the likely MVP of the National League.
Those stats alone would be enough to make Lindor the centerpiece of this playoff-bound team, but he’s been a leader among the players on the team. When the Mets looked completely cooked in late May, it was Lindor who called a team meeting following a loss to the Dodgers that saw the team dip to 22-33 on the season.
That sort of meeting isn’t always effective, and it sure feels like the percentage of them that turn seasons around is very low. But the Mets won their first two games after Lindor called that one, and by the end of June, they were just one game under .500. By the end of July, they were six games over, and at the end of August, they were eight games over. And thanks to an even better month of September, the Mets finished the season 16 games over .500 and in a playoff spot.
For the record, Francisco Lindor has had our support here at Amazin’ Avenue from the day the Mets traded for him. But for all the hullabaloo following his scrap with fellow infielder Jeff McNeil and their subsequent “rat or raccoon” explanation back in 2021, he’s turned out to be a leader on a team that has made the playoffs in two of the four seasons that he’s been on the roster.
Sure, MLB lowered the bar for making the playoffs when it expanded the postseason to twelve teams and introduced the Wild Card round. But the Mets have rarely made the playoffs even as often as this. The 1969 and 1973 rosters were of the same era, albeit with more years in between appearances. The legendary 1986 team only returned to the postseason once in 1988—though the team’s 95-win average from 1985 through 1990 constitutes the most consistent run of success the team has ever had.
The Piazza Mets made the playoffs in back-to-back years in 1999 and 2000. And despite a 97-win season in 2006 with an excellent core, the version of the Mets that began shortly after Piazza’s departure only made the playoffs once. David Wright was still able to play for some of the 2015 season, but that was firmly a new era of Mets baseball. That version of the team made the one-off Wild Card game—and unfortunately lost it—the following year. And that was it until Lindor’s Mets won 101 games and made the postseason in 2022.
There’s more work to be done, but Lindor would really cement his Mets legacy if he’s the leader of the franchise’s first championship team in nearly forty years. He’s very much on a Hall of Fame track, and a few more seasons like the past four would make him a near-lock for those honors. None of that is guaranteed, but none of it is unrealistic, either.
As far as making the postseason this year goes, there were—of course—other significant contributors. In a season that saw Kodai Senga suffer two long-term injuries, Sean Manaea and Luis Severino proved to be a capable pair of pitchers atop the Mets’ rotation. Jose Quintana worked through some really rough patches to finish the year with a respectable ERA, and David Peterson has put together the best single season of his major league career after returning from hip surgery. And aside from a failed seven-start run by Adrian Houser, the rest of the Mets’ starters this year—Tylor Megill, Christian Scott, and José Buttó—combined to give the Mets plenty of competitive innings.
The bullpen turned out to be a very respectable unit as well, despite Edwin Díaz looking a lot more human this year than he did in 2022. His season was perfectly cromulent, but Buttó’s work out of the bullpen was a very pleasant surprise, as were the innings thrown by Sean Reid-Foley, deadline acquisition Phil Maton, Dedniel Núñez, and Reed Garrett. Sixteen pitchers threw at least 10 innings out of the team’s bullpen this year. Not all of them were good, but as a group, they turned out better than anyone could have expected.
And it really wouldn’t be fair to talk about this version of the Mets making the playoffs without mentioning Lindor’s fellow position players. J.D. Martinez provided a boost and seemed like an equal parts player and hitting coach upon his arrival, even if he faded at the plate himself as the season went along.
Jose Iglesias, infielder and creator of OMG—the team’s musical and celebratory identity since he was called up from Syracuse—has been excellent in a part-time role. Mark Vientos took a massive step forward as a big league hitter. And for all the knocks on his game, Pete Alonso hit 34 home runs and was among the better first basemen in the game by wRC+ this year.
The Mets certainly would have liked to get more out of some of their players, but different parts of the season saw Francisco Alvarez and Jeff McNeil shine. Tyrone Taylor has provided more than might have been reasonably expected, even if Starling Marte’s performance and injuries have been disappointing in the penultimate year of his contract. And Brandon Nimmo is capable of better than his 2024 line, but he hasn’t been all bad by any means.
It’s a team sport, and just about everyone who’s going to make the Wild Card roster had an impact that helped get the team to this point. Without Francisco Lindor, though, the team would have come up short. As Mets fans, we’re lucky to have him, and getting to watch him play postseason games is something we should fully embrace in the moment.