NEW YORK -- By the time the Baseball Writers’ Association of America released its National League MVP Award results on Thursday evening, Francisco Lindor’s placement was a foregone conclusion. But that outcome could not extinguish the excellence of his season.

As expected, Lindor finished second to unanimous winner Shohei Ohtani in NL MVP voting, garnering 23 second-place votes and seven third-place tallies. Lindor appeared in the top three on every ballot.

• MVP Award history

He could not, however, match Ohtani, who submitted the first 50-50 season in Major League history, finishing with 54 homers, 59 stolen bases, 130 RBIs and a rather absurd .310/.390/.646 slash line for the Dodgers. Ohtani led the league in most of those categories, as well as both major versions of WAR.

Despite Ohtani’s greatness, Lindor had a reasonable path to topple him for MVP as late as mid-September, but he needed to be near-perfect to do it. Instead, Lindor missed nine of the Mets’ final 14 games due to a back injury while Ohtani padded his own stat line to seal his third career MVP.

Regardless, the season was Lindor’s best as a Met and one of the finest of his career. Largely because he played exemplary shortstop defense while Ohtani served exclusively as a DH, Lindor was able to amass 7.0 bWAR and 7.8 fWAR. He ranked above Ohtani in the latter category for much of the season’s second half.

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Along the way, Lindor further entrenched himself as a respected team leader, most notably calling the players-only meeting on May 29 that most Mets credited for their midseason turnaround. Lindor was a big part of that on the field as well, finishing with a .273/.344/.500 slash line, 33 homers, 29 stolen bases and 91 RBIs.

"Being on the field and posting up day in and day out, it's something I take a lot of pride in, it's tough to do," Lindor said Thursday on MLB Network. "Ohtani posted up every day as well. He's playing a lot. Yeah, DH and defense is not quite the same, but with that being said, just posting up every single day ... that's what we all train for in the offseason.

"I love taking hits away, too."

The second-place finish was the best of Lindor’s career, coming off consecutive seasons in which he finished ninth. His best was in 2017, when Lindor ranked fifth in American League MVP voting with Cleveland.

Lindor did receive some hardware earlier this month, earning his fourth career Silver Slugger. The shortstop, who turned 31 last week, is under contract for another seven seasons.

• Lindor wins 2nd straight Silver Slugger

All told, the Mets had three individuals receive support for the BBWAA’s four major awards. Lindor came in second for NL MVP, Carlos Mendoza finished third in NL Manager of the Year balloting and Sean Manaea finished 11th in the NL Cy Young race.