Lindor's 9th-inning hit adds to MVP argument

DENVER -- If Francisco Lindor is going to finish this season as a legitimate National League MVP candidate, he can’t be merely productive for the Mets. At key parts of the season, he’ll need to carry them.

It’s the type of task that hasn’t always been easy for Lindor over his first four years with the franchise, but things do seem to be coming easier to him in 2024. And so when the Mets needed him Wednesday night, Lindor was ready.

The Mets’ shortstop hit a tiebreaking, two-run single on the first pitch he saw in the ninth inning at Coors Field, leading the Mets to a 5-3 victory over the Rockies.

The hit capped a game that saw Lindor go 2-for-5 with two RBIs, a stolen base and a run scored, padding some of the statistics that have made him the most productive player in baseball -- at least in terms of WAR -- over the past 12 weeks.

“That’s what good players, good hitters do,” Mets manager Carlos Mendoza said.

Added pitcher Paul Blackburn, who delivered a second consecutive quality start since joining the Mets: “I just think he’s a professional hitter, really. He’s a guy that drives the ball. He’s a guy that puts together really good at-bats, a guy that gets down the line, a guy that can run on you. The defense is unbelievable. And then just kind of the leader he is in here -- we have multiple leaders that I’ve kind of noticed in my week here.”

Put more succinctly, Lindor has been the total package for the Mets. If there’s a knock on him, however, it’s that he remains prone to extended slumps, such as the one that lasted from March until the first half of May. Lindor did catch fire at that point, but after eliciting “M-V-P!” chants from the Citi Field crowd for his clutch homer in a July 25 win over the Braves, he began sputtering again, going 9-for-46 (.196) without an extra-base hit over his next 11 games.

That brought Lindor to Wednesday feeling at least somewhat unsteady. When he rolled over a 3-1 pitch with two men on base in the second inning, he returned to the dugout and told Mendoza he felt his swing had grown long. Mendoza agreed. Hitting coach Jeremy Barnes corroborated it as well, prompting Lindor to try to make an adjustment on the fly.

When Lindor returned to the plate in the ninth inning after Rockies reliever Victor Vodnik walked two consecutive hitters to load the bases, his tweak was plain to see. Rather than try to pull a pitch on the outside corner, as he had in the second inning, Lindor punched it the other way for a two-run single. Two batters later, Jesse Winker tacked on an insurance run and the Mets finished things off with relative ease from there.

“It feels good,” Lindor said. “This is the time of the year that we put ourselves in this position. We gave ourselves a chance to compete for the playoffs, and winning [lifts] our chances up.”

A productive Lindor does, too. Entering the day, Lindor ranked first in the league in FanGraphs’ calculation of WAR since May 18, which just so happens to be the day Mendoza moved him into the leadoff spot. Lindor also ranked first in hits over that stretch, second in doubles, fourth in runs, tied for fifth in home runs, and so on and so forth. You get the point.

But statistics from Opening Day through May 18 count as well, and Lindor’s well-documented struggles over that timeframe -- a .190 batting average and .617 OPS, most notably -- continue to drag down his overall numbers. Even after his two-hit performance against the Rockies, Lindor still ranks fourth in fWAR behind Shohei Ohtani, Elly De La Cruz and Ketel Marte, and even lower in Baseball Reference’s formulation of WAR.

Lindor is typically the first to say that individual awards are secondary to team success. But the idea of winning an MVP does resonate with him after five previous top-10 finishes. What’s more, MVP is a subjective award, with many voters historically favoring candidates who produce for winning teams. Lindor, for the better part of three months, has done exactly that.

It's not a complete body of work just yet, and if the season ended today, Lindor probably wouldn’t be the NL MVP.

But there’s still time to make a few more adjustments.