Is a breakout on the horizon for Lindor?

This story was excerpted from Anthony DiComo’s Mets Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

Before Thursday’s 6-5, 11-inning win over the Phillies, Francisco Lindor stood in the batter’s box at Citizens Bank Park searching for answers. His focus was on the baseball itself. Rather than clog his mind with mechanical minutiae, Lindor tried to zero in on the ball, hoping to pick up the smallest of details -- the seams, a speck of dirt, any imperfection.

If Lindor can see those things during batting practice, he feels better equipped to track his barrel to the ball during games. If Lindor can get his barrel to the ball during games, he feels his natural talent and strength will eventually shine through so he can -- finally, finally -- snap this hellish slump.

“If I find ways to get my barrel to the baseball constantly,” Lindor said, “I should get results.”

For most of this season, such results simply have not come for Lindor. After going 0-for-5 with three strikeouts in the Mets’ extra-inning win on Thursday, Lindor fell deeper into an 0-for-17 funk that has dragged his batting average down to .194. He has only been above the Mendoza Line (a .200 batting average) after 15 of the Mets’ first 43 games.

Only once previously in his career did Lindor take a sub-.200 average this deep into a season, back in 2021. That year, Lindor’s first with the Mets, was a disjointed summer for him. In retrospect, he has said, the move from Cleveland to New York was not as seamless as he assumed it would be. It affected him on and off the field.

But Lindor recovered well enough to become a standout player for the Mets from 2022-23, which is what makes his current slump so surprising. Still just 30 years old, Lindor is smack in the middle of his physical prime. Most of his underlying metrics are right where they should be. But he simply isn’t hitting.

“There have been flashes that have been really, really solid, and then times where he would probably expect himself to perform a little bit better,” president of baseball operations David Stearns said. “But I fully expect with Francisco Lindor, we’re going to look up at the end of the year, and he’s going to have a Francisco Lindor-type year. He’s a really good player.”

Stearns pointed to what he called more “consistent at-bats” from Lindor, who has done a better job staying in the strike zone in recent weeks. In particular, right-handed pitchers have not tempted him to chase changeups the way they did earlier this season. Until his final three plate appearances Thursday, in fact, Lindor’s extended 0-for did not include a single strikeout.

“I don’t know if ‘frustration’ or ‘upset’ is the right word,” Lindor said. “I don’t know what the right word for it is.”

As he tried to explain, Lindor threw up his arms and let out a heavy sigh. “It’s almost like an, ‘Ah, damn! Another one! Ugh.’ But then you try to find ways out of it.”

Perhaps this weekend will hold the key. The switch-hitting Lindor, who has always been a slightly stronger hitter from the right side of the plate, will face two left-handed starting pitchers at Marlins Park -- a stadium where he holds a .294 career average.