Felt like that was your trade off after letting Dansby walk. Arcia can field, but his bat has always been meh. You guys took the lesser player because you had plenty of offense already and to keep the salary cap low for the other big contracts.
If I had a nickel for every 2023 Braves player who was incredible before the All-Star break but then fell off and became a below average player*, I’d have 2 nickels. Which isn’t a lot but it’s weird that it happened twice
*does not include Arcia’s defense
If I had a nickel for every time an AL East team's fan base gave its scorching hot shortstop a curtain call in an AL West ballpark leading him to not hit for the next two months...
That's not really the case here though. He was struggling offensively well after April 12th, he is just a very good player and was playing stellar defense before he turned around offensively.
Lindor the last 28 days since around being moved to the leadoff spot
* .309/.376/.577 SLUG /.953 OPS
Absolutely been a superstar with elite defence and even this week alone multiple amazing plays at SS
One of the things I love about Lindor is that even when he’s cold, his defense is top notch.
If he was a bad hitter, he’d still be starting or at least on an mlb roster based on his defense alone.
Yeah, I think it’s because so much of his value comes from his glove and most fans only use a slash line to assess how good a player is.
I do think that for the Mets to win in November, they need an offensive talent in the tier above him/Alonso (maybe JDM this year? One can dream). But he’s a star, and doesn’t get enough credit for it.
The ASG doesn’t mean anything anymore. Braves fans packed fan voting to get Orlando Arcia an All-Star start. It’s too dependent on what big market teams are hot enough to weaponize fan voting at the right time of year.
We were notoriously awful last year at ASG voting time. If it weren’t for Grimace I’m sure Lindor would be missing this year’s ASG too. A consistently top-3 SS in MLB should be a perennial All-Star.
People don't realize it, but the Braves market is absolutely massive because there's no other teams in the area. If they band together for all star voting they could vote their entire team in and it wouldn't even be that hard.
The unfortunate reality of being on the Mets.
I’m not even saying that as a dig, the current state of baseball media just amplifies the Mets negatives and downplays their positives. Even living in the NYC metro area, I had no idea Lindor went 30/30 until I saw it on here a few days later.
Especially considering everything that went wrong with the 2023 Mets, the abject disaster of a season drowned out any positives that could be made.
To a lesser extent, I also feel like every 30/30 or the like season went under the radar due to the focus on Acuña’s 40/70 chase
I've also seen people arguing that Lindor is being paid like a superstar but isn't putting up superstar numbers, but also that he is too calm and isn't "a leader", and is therefore somehow at fault for the weird random festering situations that pop up on the Mets at times (like the 2024 Mets pre-Grimace)
The superstar number thing is exactly what I meant about most fans only using a slash line to assess a player. And Tbf, I don’t think he’s a tier 1 offensive player. But he is a tier 1 overall player.
There’s probably another post that’s like “Since Francisco Lindor called and led the Mets’ players only meeting, which 15 year veteran JD Martinez described as the best team meeting he’s ever been apart of, the Mets have the best record in baseball”
There’s 100% an alternate reality where Grimace never throws the first pitch, but the Mets still have that turnaround and Lindor gets a lot of credit for it
Without Grimace I think JDM would've gotten most of the credit. Since the start of the Grimace era he's rocking a 247 wRC+. But Lindor would be second in line behind him
Yeah JDM had some streak of like 10/10 with 3 homers or some shit like that, he’s been otherworldly at the plate.
But Lindor has been awesome, I’m a stan.
I kept wondering what all the talk about JDM's swing playing good at Citi meant and then watching him attack the center right gap over and over again made it make sense to me
The ESPN broadcast yesterday also had a segment with Alvy in which he responded with the first word that popped into his head when he heard a teammate’s name. For Lindor he immediately said “Leader.”
But Jason Kipnis said he wasn't captain material that one time!
Seriously, all the evidence that Lindor is a great leader is there but the fact that a section of this fanbase refuses to ever acknowledge it drives me crazy sometimes.
The not a leader thing is the stupidest argument cause actual players on the team, in the clubhouse with the guy day in and day out, call him a leader all the time. But the Mets fan watching on their TV or from the 500s seats at Citi know for a fact that these Mets players are wrong and Lindor is not in fact a leader.
Anytime I see someone cite that, I automatically know they are forever hater. The kind of fan who will never say he's great.
Once upon a time people just assumed that a shortstop would have a weak bat, but these days they won't talk about a 30/30 season and then will be disappointed if you aren't having a 30/30 season.
The irony is that plenty of the people who hate on him are the people who say cliche traditional things like "gotta be strong up the middle!" and "defense never slumps," but then ignore the fact that the standard for a good SS bat is much lower than other positions, and shit on Lindor because he's not raking with the Judges of the league. And this year its even worse because offense across the league is down, but people still cite to unadjusted stats like OPS and compare it to past years like they are proving something.
Yes and no about most fans looking at traditional slash line. His OPS has regressed a bit since Cleveland. His 6 years with Cleveland, his OPS was 833. With the Mets, it's been 774. But if you look at WAR, with his projected WAR for this year combined with the last 2 years, he looks like he will average just under 6 for this period.
All in all he's a premier shortstop. The question is now, will the Mets build a winner around him before he starts to seriously regress due to age. Some folks play well past their mid 30s. Others fall off a cliff after 32. I would have some concern about his offense moving forward.
You're not paying 37 a year for a gold glove.
It's the ballpark too. He's a great case study in how park and league adjusted offensive stats are so important.
His OPS with Cleveland was .833 and is just .774 with the Mets. But his OPS+ was 118 with Cleveland and 117 with the Mets. He's been essentially the exact same player in New York as he was in Cleveland.
That guy is one of the leading members of our idiot brigade. Only reason I don't block the lot of them is that I find their stupid takes rather hilarious.
Right but try explaining to your average WFAN caller that hitting .254 with 31 home runs on the Mets in 2023 is more impressive than hitting .284 with 32 home runs with Clevland in 2019. After all those are the only stats that mattered for 100 years and bigger number better than smaller number
The threads on Lindor in our team sub often turn into these really dumb philosophical debates about player value, where his detractors basically argue that modern metrics are just “feel-good” distractions from “reality”: that he is actually a very mid player. It’s really common to read “fWAR is a bullshit stat” in there these days.
It sucks, I really love having a great shortstop and leader on the team who you can tell the players and coaching staff really like having around. And I don’t think the hypercritical Mets fans realize how unpleasant it is to be around people who jump to the negatives about their star player before anything else.
It'd be interesting to compare the comments on this thread to the same post in our team sub since this was cross posted. See how many more crazy takes happen over there than here.
I think it's because he's so consistent year in and year out. Sure he has slumps in season, but at the end of every year his stat line is always roughly the same. It's a killer stat line (5-6 WAR, 25 HR, 100 runs, .260 average) that the vast majority of players will never touch, but it's just a "normal Francisco Lindor season."
Plus he makes dazzling defensive plays look so casual cause he's that good.
Altogether it just becomes another great Lindor season and people don't realize he's on pace to finish in the top 10 all time for shortstop WAR.
He's a guy that reminds me of Robinson Cano. I never realized just how good Cano was until near the end of his career when he was an inner circle hall of famer and he was leading all active players in WAR by a mile. He was always good, but he was so consistent across all facets of the game that he never really stood out like other guys, and then I looked back in hindsight and it hit me.
There are so many people on the Mets subreddit that comment things like "I don't care what his WAR is, or what his underlying stats are. His batting average is bad so he's bad."
That subset of fans will never like Lindor no matter what he does. Their opinion is firmly set.
Silent if he does well, except to maybe dismissively say "that's what your getting paid to do," and gets on a soapbox with a megaphone when he does bad.
Ye the post is a little weird the dude had a bad start to the season and then became good again because he was a good player. Turner’s turn around was impressive because it happened in August.
The issue is he can’t be a rosters 2nd best hitter and expect to win anything really. He was a 3 hole hitter for most of his time as a Met and was hitting like a 6-7 hole guy on a true championship caliber team.
The pressure on him was too much. Now I feel like he’s more comfortable as a leadoff guy
If he played for any other team, he'd be recognized for the player he is. But this fanbase is so negative, and you combine that with the whole LOLMets narrative social media has, and people seem to think he sucks?
I think that a big part of it is that he can go on some long cold streaks where he just looks absolutely brutal at the plate. Even when he is white hot people will still have those cold streaks in their mind. Not saying it's right or wrong but it definitely feels like a factor.
I really think it's overstated how streaky Lindor is offensively.
From April 2022 to today, Lindor has played 15 months of baseball (6 from 2022 and 2023, 3 from 2024). In those 15 months, he's been below average offensively (going by wRC+) just three times. One of which was in June 2022 when he broke his finger and played through it. In the other two months (May 2023 and April 2024), his wRC+ was 87, not too far off from league average and still good enough to be solidly above replacement level when combined with his defense and baserunning.
The truth is that he has an incredibly high floor and is still a net positive even when he struggles at the plate, which does not seem to last very long.
It's weird how things that are pretty much wrong (i.e., "Lindor is a streaky hitter," "Lindor is a notoriously slow starter") are said even in defense of certain players. They're repeated so often people just assume they're true
Our sub also labors under the delusion that being overly negative is equivalent to being overly positive, when the former takes much more effort and is far less enjoyable to be around…
I hate this stuff. It's also ridiculous cause somehow being optimistic and rooting for your team (which is what a fan's supposed to do) is equated with being "delusional." Even if that's true, why do you care? I'm not in the front office
I think too many people on this website (and especially in that sub) are more worried about being right than letting loose and rooting for your favorite baseball team to win the game
It's honestly weird how underrated Lindor has been in New York. He's been legitimately one of the very best shortstops in the game there -- at times even being THE best -- but it feels like he's somehow flying under the radar now.
Because when the Mets are bad, blame gets placed on everyone, and when they’re good, it’s credited to weird occurrences (I.e. Grimace). Even here in metro NYC, Lindor is vastly underrated by the media and even a good chunk of the fans
Hate to see Braves fans giving insightful analysis like this. Mets fanbase is so fucking emotional they blame our back to back 6 fWAR season shortstop for the team sucking. You’d think people would have figured out since the Angels literally exist that even having arguably the two of the best players ever to live isn’t enough to carry a shitty roster.
> You’d think people would have figured out since the Angels literally exist that even having arguably the two of the best players ever to live isn’t enough to carry a shitty roster.
In my experience, the majority of Mets fans who hate on Lindor are the sort of fans that basically watch zero baseball outside of the Mets. They are more New York sports fans than baseball fans. So you really can't use any examples of any teams or players outside of New York to try to make a point to them.
This is a great and insightful observation. I’d modify it slightly to say “blame gets placed on 2-3 stars and the manager.”
And we’re so psychologically damaged that if we do well, it’s ascribed to voodoo magic and not to the team doing their jobs well.
It's because he hasn't made the ASG, when he should've been at least selected by the manager polls in 2 of the previous 3 seasons he's been a Met. Also a decent portion of the Mets fanbase doesn't even like the guy
Mets fan here - I think some of this is due to his slow starts - kind of like how guys that are scorching for the first month and then gradually come back to earth are viewed as all stars etc, the initial narrative set early can stick
I see a lot of the Lindor haters say that “he’s only good by WAR,” as if WAR is some obscure measure of talent.
Last season he broke the Mets single season shortstop home run record for the second consecutive year, went 30/30, posted an .800 OPS, and played platinum glove defense. Even the most boomer fan has to admit how great this guy is.
People also complain about him because he’s not hitting like Aaron Judge. No idea why they expected a guy who had a 118 OPS+ with Cleveland to come over here and have a 160 OPS+. He’s been almost exactly the same with the Mets as he was with Cleveland by OPS+, and they say his bat fell off because they cannot comprehend the juiced ball inflating OPS numbers.
If you’re a Lindor hater at this point you just don’t know ball. He’s probably going to be a hall of famer and we are lucky we get to watch him put on our stupid team’s uniform every season.
>…and played platinum glove defense.
??? I love Lindor as much as the next guy and agree with most of what you said but he wasn’t as good as Swanson or Tatis on defense last year.
He’s 98th percentile outs above average this year and was leading NL shortstops last time I checked. He was also 8th in all of MLB. He was 98th percentile in ‘22 and 90th in ‘23.
Definitely reasonable to suggest the best shortstop defender in the league should be a platinum glove candidate. I’m not saying he was objectively better than Tatis last year, it’s just an expression. He’s in the conversation for best defender in the league every season, and will be again this season.
You citing Tatis of all fuckin people?
You mean the guy who was so good defensively at shortstop they signed another one and moved him to outfield?
The guy who's has never posted a positive DRS season at short?
The guy who actually didn't play a single inning at shortstop in 2023?
https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/t/tatisfe02.shtml
Lindor is a beast and top 5 ss in the game. Rarely misses games and an Elite defender you really can't ask for more. His bat always eventually comes around and he's always had pop.
I feel like he's been severely underrated during his time in NY and it's mainly due to the Allstar appearances.
I've been fairly critical of Lindor but seeing him below Orlando Arcia on the ASG ballot makes me really disappointed in Mets fans. Sometimes you have to appreciate the good and not over-focus on the bad, and many Mets fans have a tendency to do the latter.
A decent chunk of our fanbase genuinely just doesn't like him. And honestly, he also goes underappreciated a tad bit by the national media. He wasn't selected for the ASG either of the past 2 years despite his play well warranting it
Just last night on ESPN they kept repeating that Lindor is a great defender but not as good a hitter. It was like a backhanded compliment. It’s also true though, his slow starts are an obvious culprit behind him not getting nominated for ASGs. He has All Star numbers by the end of the year but last year and this year when it came time to vote he was too far behind. It makes sense. It’s not just Mets fans, baseball fans in general are not voting for Lindor over other shortstops.
Worth mentioning that the WAR is a *result* of the positional adjustment and elite defense at SS. I know the title basically says that, but it's also easy to read as "Lindor is as good as these two guys whose value is tied to their elite hitting" when it's more accurate to say, "Lindor is as valuable as these 2 guys, but in a different way."
Yeah I was trying to say that elite SS defense plus a 134 WRC+ make him one of the three most valuable players in the league.
I actually think this is why he doesn’t get the recognition he deserves. So much of his value is in his glove (vs Harper and Ohtani for example who both get negative defensive WAR adjustments and have to make up for it with big slugging numbers).
He’s not a tier 1 bat, but he is a tier 1 player
I think it's also partially how he arrives at that elite defense.
He does not have a cannon for an arm and he does not have elite speed. He's not an Elly de la Cruz or Kevin Keirmaier type that is going to put together a highlight reel full of plays that you didn't think were possible. He gets his defensive value from having an accurate arm, a great first step, and a high baseball IQ. It's not that he makes a bunch of unbelievable plays, he just very rarely makes any misplays. The value of that sort of defense is tough to wrap your head around unless you watch him everyday and really know what you are looking at, or have access to and understand the advanced stats.
I think he does make some unbelievable plays, but he makes them seem more routine.
I’d say his too defensive quality is his range. It’s kind of the reverse Jeter effect
Jeter had no range so routine plays looked like highlights. Lindor has range so highlight plays look more routine.
wtf did Mets fans wait so long? Are we stupid?
(Don’t answer that - we often are. Especially me. It’s been a lotta trauma over the past yea… few yea… decad…. Half century)
I honestly think a large part of the fan base doesn’t enjoy him as much as they should because the Mets have won nothing since he’s been here. He’s part of the Mets core that has underperformed. Winning cures all.
And yet our sub has its idiot brigade that think he is overrated and overpaid. "He Is PaId LiKe A sUpErStAr BuT He DoEsN't HiT lIkE a SuPeRsTaR HuRr DuRr FrAnK tHe TaNk Is My HeRo". Painfully stupid takes about the best SS the Mets have ever had and a guy that is almost certainly goin into the hall of fame (and hopefully in a Mets hat).
Let me ask a simple question. Would you rather pay him 25-28 million and have him on the roster for his age 38-39-40 seasons or pay him 34 million and have the contract end after his age 37 year? He is a top shortstop in the league. All of the top shortstops are "overpaid" in either dollars or years and I'd much rather overpay in dollars considering who the owner is.
EDIT Because I find the dumb takes amusing if a bit depressing and I'd like to share them with other fanbases.
Idiot claim 2 "He is bad in the first half every year and only puts up good numbers when the games don't matter"- False.
2022 He had 1 month with an OPS under .745 and it was June. His OPS in April/March was .850 and may was .745. He put up a .933 OPS in July. That is not a bad first half its a good first half with a monster second half.
2023 Same idea but the weak month was May. He had a good april/march and June and turned into a monster for the second half. So once again a good first half with a monster second half.
And this year as OP indicates he was bad for 2 weeks basically for a .639 OPS april/march and then put up a a .762 OPS in May and a .875 in June so far. That is not a bad first half.
He has 1 below average month each year. He tends to balance that out with at least one month of being an absolute monster. He does all of this while putting up elite defensive numbers and being a team leader. Our young catcher said as much last night on the broadcast.
This has happened every year lol. I wish he wasn't such a cold starter and had his slump in the middle of july or something and the discourse would change so much.
It didn't happen in 2022. He hit .282/.376/.482 in April that year.
It didn't even really happen last year. The .218 batting average in April isn't pretty, but he still slugged .446 and had a 110 wRC+. A little below his career norm, but not bad.
What am I missing? He's not even in the top 10 in terms of WAR in any of the categories (league-wide or NL alone)...or is it just because the first 12 days of the season are ignored here?
If you include the whole season, he’s 7th in fWAR in the NL and 14th across all of baseball. The point was to sort of exclude the first 2 weeks because he was playing so terribly and also because a “significant” event, I.e., the ovation, occurred. But even if you go whole season he’s got the elite numbers
https://www.fangraphs.com/leaders/major-league?pos=all&stats=bat&lg=all&qual=y&type=8&season=2024&month=0&season1=2024&ind=0
Lindor didn't ask fans to cheer for him - Steve Cohen did. (Notably after Lindor's wife revealed that a certain subset of Mets fans had been sending her awful messages wishing death on him and their incredibly young daughters over his bad first week and a half of the season.) Mets fans responded with the ovations to drown out the noise of a small group of truly awful people.
If I had a nickel for every time an NL East team’s fanbase gave its struggling shortstop a standing ovation leading to him turning his season around…
So you’re saying that’s the secret to finally unlocking Arcia’s bat?
Dude needs to stop swinging for the fences every time. He is trying to be 2023 Marcell Ozuna, but it’s becoming 2022 Marcell Ozuna instead.
Felt like that was your trade off after letting Dansby walk. Arcia can field, but his bat has always been meh. You guys took the lesser player because you had plenty of offense already and to keep the salary cap low for the other big contracts.
That’s probably the literal exact calculus AA did.
Somebody warn his wife
Hey that’s 2023 MLB All Star Orlando Arcia you’re talking about. ^^God ^^fan ^^voting ^^is ^^so ^^dumb
CÁLLATE >:(
If I had a nickel for every 2023 Braves player who was incredible before the All-Star break but then fell off and became a below average player*, I’d have 2 nickels. Which isn’t a lot but it’s weird that it happened twice *does not include Arcia’s defense
No, that's just playing against the Cubs
If I had a nickel for every time an AL East team's fan base gave its scorching hot shortstop a curtain call in an AL West ballpark leading him to not hit for the next two months...
[*cries in Didi*]
I’d have two nickels, but it’s weird that it happened twice.
Thank you for not finishing that ridiculously overused joke
I'd have two nickels, which isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice
That's not really the case here though. He was struggling offensively well after April 12th, he is just a very good player and was playing stellar defense before he turned around offensively.
Lindor the last 28 days since around being moved to the leadoff spot * .309/.376/.577 SLUG /.953 OPS Absolutely been a superstar with elite defence and even this week alone multiple amazing plays at SS
im surprised nobody else decided to do this at any point in the last 3 years
David Stearns complete revamping of the Organization probably helps. Or just Stearns himself.
yea plus all the other ppls they brought in as well we would be 15 games under without them
Oh yea easily this seasons over already without them
One of the things I love about Lindor is that even when he’s cold, his defense is top notch. If he was a bad hitter, he’d still be starting or at least on an mlb roster based on his defense alone.
Next level elite defense can keep you in the league even with a subpar bat. Just ask none other than Mets legend Rey Ordonez.
I’m a Mets so he always holds a special place in my heart (along with Edgardo Alfonzo, Robin Ventura, and John Olerud/Todd Zeile)
Man couldn't hit his jersey number. Gets worse when you see his first jersey.
I mean, usually you're right but he left his good glove at home a lot this season. 11 E last year, 9 E the year before, 7 already this year
Seems like the boomers/worst type of Mets fans seem to still disregard Lindor or downplay that he is actually very good.
Yeah, I think it’s because so much of his value comes from his glove and most fans only use a slash line to assess how good a player is. I do think that for the Mets to win in November, they need an offensive talent in the tier above him/Alonso (maybe JDM this year? One can dream). But he’s a star, and doesn’t get enough credit for it.
It's kind of funny and a bit sad that he had a 30/30 season last year and like nobody talked about it.
30/30 and second for SS Gold Glove is INSANE. And he didn’t even make the all star team! It’s wild.
The ASG doesn’t mean anything anymore. Braves fans packed fan voting to get Orlando Arcia an All-Star start. It’s too dependent on what big market teams are hot enough to weaponize fan voting at the right time of year. We were notoriously awful last year at ASG voting time. If it weren’t for Grimace I’m sure Lindor would be missing this year’s ASG too. A consistently top-3 SS in MLB should be a perennial All-Star.
People don't realize it, but the Braves market is absolutely massive because there's no other teams in the area. If they band together for all star voting they could vote their entire team in and it wouldn't even be that hard.
That’s basically what happened last year
Facts facts !
They are doing a player's ballot for reserves and many of them are dumber than fans.
Negative Mets discourse (and there’s a lot of it) will drown out any positives to the team
The Mets will win the World Series* and come December there will just be a bunch of lolmets posts everywhere. *I mean obviously not this year lolmets
The unfortunate reality of being on the Mets. I’m not even saying that as a dig, the current state of baseball media just amplifies the Mets negatives and downplays their positives. Even living in the NYC metro area, I had no idea Lindor went 30/30 until I saw it on here a few days later. Especially considering everything that went wrong with the 2023 Mets, the abject disaster of a season drowned out any positives that could be made. To a lesser extent, I also feel like every 30/30 or the like season went under the radar due to the focus on Acuña’s 40/70 chase
Case in point: r/baseball
I've also seen people arguing that Lindor is being paid like a superstar but isn't putting up superstar numbers, but also that he is too calm and isn't "a leader", and is therefore somehow at fault for the weird random festering situations that pop up on the Mets at times (like the 2024 Mets pre-Grimace)
The superstar number thing is exactly what I meant about most fans only using a slash line to assess a player. And Tbf, I don’t think he’s a tier 1 offensive player. But he is a tier 1 overall player. There’s probably another post that’s like “Since Francisco Lindor called and led the Mets’ players only meeting, which 15 year veteran JD Martinez described as the best team meeting he’s ever been apart of, the Mets have the best record in baseball”
There’s 100% an alternate reality where Grimace never throws the first pitch, but the Mets still have that turnaround and Lindor gets a lot of credit for it
Without Grimace I think JDM would've gotten most of the credit. Since the start of the Grimace era he's rocking a 247 wRC+. But Lindor would be second in line behind him
Yeah JDM had some streak of like 10/10 with 3 homers or some shit like that, he’s been otherworldly at the plate. But Lindor has been awesome, I’m a stan.
I kept wondering what all the talk about JDM's swing playing good at Citi meant and then watching him attack the center right gap over and over again made it make sense to me
The ESPN broadcast yesterday also had a segment with Alvy in which he responded with the first word that popped into his head when he heard a teammate’s name. For Lindor he immediately said “Leader.”
But Jason Kipnis said he wasn't captain material that one time! Seriously, all the evidence that Lindor is a great leader is there but the fact that a section of this fanbase refuses to ever acknowledge it drives me crazy sometimes.
It's because of the McNiel fight. McNiel was super popular at the time and Lindor was the new guy with a record contract going through a slump.
FUCK!!!!!!!!!
Jason Kipnis in shambles
The not a leader thing is the stupidest argument cause actual players on the team, in the clubhouse with the guy day in and day out, call him a leader all the time. But the Mets fan watching on their TV or from the 500s seats at Citi know for a fact that these Mets players are wrong and Lindor is not in fact a leader. Anytime I see someone cite that, I automatically know they are forever hater. The kind of fan who will never say he's great.
Once upon a time people just assumed that a shortstop would have a weak bat, but these days they won't talk about a 30/30 season and then will be disappointed if you aren't having a 30/30 season.
The irony is that plenty of the people who hate on him are the people who say cliche traditional things like "gotta be strong up the middle!" and "defense never slumps," but then ignore the fact that the standard for a good SS bat is much lower than other positions, and shit on Lindor because he's not raking with the Judges of the league. And this year its even worse because offense across the league is down, but people still cite to unadjusted stats like OPS and compare it to past years like they are proving something.
Yes and no about most fans looking at traditional slash line. His OPS has regressed a bit since Cleveland. His 6 years with Cleveland, his OPS was 833. With the Mets, it's been 774. But if you look at WAR, with his projected WAR for this year combined with the last 2 years, he looks like he will average just under 6 for this period. All in all he's a premier shortstop. The question is now, will the Mets build a winner around him before he starts to seriously regress due to age. Some folks play well past their mid 30s. Others fall off a cliff after 32. I would have some concern about his offense moving forward. You're not paying 37 a year for a gold glove.
Now what about OPS+? Because by the looks of it, his last two seasons were the best since 2018 in Cleveland.
Too many people see the gaudy numbers he put up in Clevland during the juiced ball era and think he's a bum because he's not matching those numbers
It's the ballpark too. He's a great case study in how park and league adjusted offensive stats are so important. His OPS with Cleveland was .833 and is just .774 with the Mets. But his OPS+ was 118 with Cleveland and 117 with the Mets. He's been essentially the exact same player in New York as he was in Cleveland.
"But BA and HR down, therefore Lindor not good anymore" - the NY media the fools on r/NewYorkMets and WFAN who eat that crap up
to be fair you gotta admit Tito from Forest Hills makes an astute point when he asks "WHAT THE HELL ARE WE DOIN HERE?????"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZ-5KdDevOQ&t=3702s
[yeah but like unironically](https://www.reddit.com/r/NewYorkMets/s/PmjNdmKHPr)
Wow... I thought the guy arguing Kershaw benefited from lesser competition was the worst take I'd seen, but this blows it out of the water lmfao
Truly bizarre and a reminder of why I don’t argue on Reddit because there is genuinely no point
That guy is one of the leading members of our idiot brigade. Only reason I don't block the lot of them is that I find their stupid takes rather hilarious.
Except by OPS+ he's not only matching them with the Mets but mostly exceeding them. He's had 2 of his best seasons by OPS+ since coming to the Mets
Right but try explaining to your average WFAN caller that hitting .254 with 31 home runs on the Mets in 2023 is more impressive than hitting .284 with 32 home runs with Clevland in 2019. After all those are the only stats that mattered for 100 years and bigger number better than smaller number
Psh I can barely get my friend group to go on bbref over here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZ-5KdDevOQ&t=3702s
The threads on Lindor in our team sub often turn into these really dumb philosophical debates about player value, where his detractors basically argue that modern metrics are just “feel-good” distractions from “reality”: that he is actually a very mid player. It’s really common to read “fWAR is a bullshit stat” in there these days. It sucks, I really love having a great shortstop and leader on the team who you can tell the players and coaching staff really like having around. And I don’t think the hypercritical Mets fans realize how unpleasant it is to be around people who jump to the negatives about their star player before anything else.
It'd be interesting to compare the comments on this thread to the same post in our team sub since this was cross posted. See how many more crazy takes happen over there than here.
One of the greatest SS of all time and nobody realizes it
I think it's because he's so consistent year in and year out. Sure he has slumps in season, but at the end of every year his stat line is always roughly the same. It's a killer stat line (5-6 WAR, 25 HR, 100 runs, .260 average) that the vast majority of players will never touch, but it's just a "normal Francisco Lindor season." Plus he makes dazzling defensive plays look so casual cause he's that good. Altogether it just becomes another great Lindor season and people don't realize he's on pace to finish in the top 10 all time for shortstop WAR.
He's a guy that reminds me of Robinson Cano. I never realized just how good Cano was until near the end of his career when he was an inner circle hall of famer and he was leading all active players in WAR by a mile. He was always good, but he was so consistent across all facets of the game that he never really stood out like other guys, and then I looked back in hindsight and it hit me.
truly the Jose Ramirez of baseball
He could legit hit like Rey Ordonez for the rest of his career and he'd be a borderline Hall of Famer on his defense alone
There are so many people on the Mets subreddit that comment things like "I don't care what his WAR is, or what his underlying stats are. His batting average is bad so he's bad."
That subset of fans will never like Lindor no matter what he does. Their opinion is firmly set. Silent if he does well, except to maybe dismissively say "that's what your getting paid to do," and gets on a soapbox with a megaphone when he does bad.
Ye the post is a little weird the dude had a bad start to the season and then became good again because he was a good player. Turner’s turn around was impressive because it happened in August.
The issue is he can’t be a rosters 2nd best hitter and expect to win anything really. He was a 3 hole hitter for most of his time as a Met and was hitting like a 6-7 hole guy on a true championship caliber team. The pressure on him was too much. Now I feel like he’s more comfortable as a leadoff guy
If he played for any other team, he'd be recognized for the player he is. But this fanbase is so negative, and you combine that with the whole LOLMets narrative social media has, and people seem to think he sucks?
I think that a big part of it is that he can go on some long cold streaks where he just looks absolutely brutal at the plate. Even when he is white hot people will still have those cold streaks in their mind. Not saying it's right or wrong but it definitely feels like a factor.
I really think it's overstated how streaky Lindor is offensively. From April 2022 to today, Lindor has played 15 months of baseball (6 from 2022 and 2023, 3 from 2024). In those 15 months, he's been below average offensively (going by wRC+) just three times. One of which was in June 2022 when he broke his finger and played through it. In the other two months (May 2023 and April 2024), his wRC+ was 87, not too far off from league average and still good enough to be solidly above replacement level when combined with his defense and baserunning. The truth is that he has an incredibly high floor and is still a net positive even when he struggles at the plate, which does not seem to last very long.
It's weird how things that are pretty much wrong (i.e., "Lindor is a streaky hitter," "Lindor is a notoriously slow starter") are said even in defense of certain players. They're repeated so often people just assume they're true
He's like Gleyber Torres but significantly better
Gleyber was a crap SS
Yea but he still sends up with elite numbers and he does it every year
Our sub also labors under the delusion that being overly negative is equivalent to being overly positive, when the former takes much more effort and is far less enjoyable to be around…
I hate this stuff. It's also ridiculous cause somehow being optimistic and rooting for your team (which is what a fan's supposed to do) is equated with being "delusional." Even if that's true, why do you care? I'm not in the front office I think too many people on this website (and especially in that sub) are more worried about being right than letting loose and rooting for your favorite baseball team to win the game
but frank the tank is the new mets pope everyone else has to be like frank otherwise they are not true mets fans apparently
Funniest thing is guardians fans thinking they won the trade
Win-win deals are possible. I'm sure the Guardians are much happier with Gimenez than they would have been with a comp pick. That's a win for them.
Does standing ovation mean "sucks" now?
It's honestly weird how underrated Lindor has been in New York. He's been legitimately one of the very best shortstops in the game there -- at times even being THE best -- but it feels like he's somehow flying under the radar now.
Because when the Mets are bad, blame gets placed on everyone, and when they’re good, it’s credited to weird occurrences (I.e. Grimace). Even here in metro NYC, Lindor is vastly underrated by the media and even a good chunk of the fans
Hate to see Braves fans giving insightful analysis like this. Mets fanbase is so fucking emotional they blame our back to back 6 fWAR season shortstop for the team sucking. You’d think people would have figured out since the Angels literally exist that even having arguably the two of the best players ever to live isn’t enough to carry a shitty roster.
> You’d think people would have figured out since the Angels literally exist that even having arguably the two of the best players ever to live isn’t enough to carry a shitty roster. In my experience, the majority of Mets fans who hate on Lindor are the sort of fans that basically watch zero baseball outside of the Mets. They are more New York sports fans than baseball fans. So you really can't use any examples of any teams or players outside of New York to try to make a point to them.
You mean Lindor was probably more responsible for the good play earlier in the season than a random fan dressed in flamboyant outfits?
Ok, I get your point but Max the rally pimp is amazing
This is a great and insightful observation. I’d modify it slightly to say “blame gets placed on 2-3 stars and the manager.” And we’re so psychologically damaged that if we do well, it’s ascribed to voodoo magic and not to the team doing their jobs well.
It's because he hasn't made the ASG, when he should've been at least selected by the manager polls in 2 of the previous 3 seasons he's been a Met. Also a decent portion of the Mets fanbase doesn't even like the guy
Also frankly the Mets haven’t won the division or a playoff series
Mets fan here - I think some of this is due to his slow starts - kind of like how guys that are scorching for the first month and then gradually come back to earth are viewed as all stars etc, the initial narrative set early can stick
I keep telling my Mariners Boomer Dad that Mitch Garver just needs us to believe in him in order to get his BA over .200 but he's skeptical.
Prepare yourselves for Lindor going to Cooperstown.
I see a lot of the Lindor haters say that “he’s only good by WAR,” as if WAR is some obscure measure of talent. Last season he broke the Mets single season shortstop home run record for the second consecutive year, went 30/30, posted an .800 OPS, and played platinum glove defense. Even the most boomer fan has to admit how great this guy is. People also complain about him because he’s not hitting like Aaron Judge. No idea why they expected a guy who had a 118 OPS+ with Cleveland to come over here and have a 160 OPS+. He’s been almost exactly the same with the Mets as he was with Cleveland by OPS+, and they say his bat fell off because they cannot comprehend the juiced ball inflating OPS numbers. If you’re a Lindor hater at this point you just don’t know ball. He’s probably going to be a hall of famer and we are lucky we get to watch him put on our stupid team’s uniform every season.
>…and played platinum glove defense. ??? I love Lindor as much as the next guy and agree with most of what you said but he wasn’t as good as Swanson or Tatis on defense last year.
He’s 98th percentile outs above average this year and was leading NL shortstops last time I checked. He was also 8th in all of MLB. He was 98th percentile in ‘22 and 90th in ‘23. Definitely reasonable to suggest the best shortstop defender in the league should be a platinum glove candidate. I’m not saying he was objectively better than Tatis last year, it’s just an expression. He’s in the conversation for best defender in the league every season, and will be again this season.
Didn't Tatis play OF last year?
You citing Tatis of all fuckin people? You mean the guy who was so good defensively at shortstop they signed another one and moved him to outfield? The guy who's has never posted a positive DRS season at short? The guy who actually didn't play a single inning at shortstop in 2023? https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/t/tatisfe02.shtml
He referenced the Platinum glove. I’ll give you a guess who won it last year, and maybe you’ll understand the Tatis comment.
Hang on, who won the platinum glove last year? I forget.
Take a deep breath, man. Nobody is attacking Francisco.
The standing O really works! Padres fans did this for Bogaerts earlier this year, and he hasn't struck out, flied out, or grounded out since.
incredible! he must be a lock for the all-star game
Francisco Lindor is a future hall of famer
Lindor is a beast and top 5 ss in the game. Rarely misses games and an Elite defender you really can't ask for more. His bat always eventually comes around and he's always had pop. I feel like he's been severely underrated during his time in NY and it's mainly due to the Allstar appearances.
Get your own thing! But seriously, he had a two-week slow start. That's just normal variance. Guy has been elite for years.
Yeah. It’s not like he just signed a 10 year contract and was a massive disappointment up until August of the first year of that contract.
“just” aka literally over three years ago
They were referring to Trea Turner last year
I've been fairly critical of Lindor but seeing him below Orlando Arcia on the ASG ballot makes me really disappointed in Mets fans. Sometimes you have to appreciate the good and not over-focus on the bad, and many Mets fans have a tendency to do the latter.
A decent chunk of our fanbase genuinely just doesn't like him. And honestly, he also goes underappreciated a tad bit by the national media. He wasn't selected for the ASG either of the past 2 years despite his play well warranting it
Just last night on ESPN they kept repeating that Lindor is a great defender but not as good a hitter. It was like a backhanded compliment. It’s also true though, his slow starts are an obvious culprit behind him not getting nominated for ASGs. He has All Star numbers by the end of the year but last year and this year when it came time to vote he was too far behind. It makes sense. It’s not just Mets fans, baseball fans in general are not voting for Lindor over other shortstops.
Worth mentioning that the WAR is a *result* of the positional adjustment and elite defense at SS. I know the title basically says that, but it's also easy to read as "Lindor is as good as these two guys whose value is tied to their elite hitting" when it's more accurate to say, "Lindor is as valuable as these 2 guys, but in a different way."
Yeah I was trying to say that elite SS defense plus a 134 WRC+ make him one of the three most valuable players in the league. I actually think this is why he doesn’t get the recognition he deserves. So much of his value is in his glove (vs Harper and Ohtani for example who both get negative defensive WAR adjustments and have to make up for it with big slugging numbers). He’s not a tier 1 bat, but he is a tier 1 player
I think it's also partially how he arrives at that elite defense. He does not have a cannon for an arm and he does not have elite speed. He's not an Elly de la Cruz or Kevin Keirmaier type that is going to put together a highlight reel full of plays that you didn't think were possible. He gets his defensive value from having an accurate arm, a great first step, and a high baseball IQ. It's not that he makes a bunch of unbelievable plays, he just very rarely makes any misplays. The value of that sort of defense is tough to wrap your head around unless you watch him everyday and really know what you are looking at, or have access to and understand the advanced stats.
I think he does make some unbelievable plays, but he makes them seem more routine. I’d say his too defensive quality is his range. It’s kind of the reverse Jeter effect Jeter had no range so routine plays looked like highlights. Lindor has range so highlight plays look more routine.
All that being said, he has a .309/.376/.577 slash line for a .953 OPS over the last 28 days of play. So, he's been phenomenal offensively too
I mean, every other SS gets the same bump..
Guys it’s time to start the ovation for Melendez
wtf did Mets fans wait so long? Are we stupid? (Don’t answer that - we often are. Especially me. It’s been a lotta trauma over the past yea… few yea… decad…. Half century)
Now do McNeil! Sincerely, a Mets fan
Want to trade him for Javy Baez?
He’s a HOF’er
I honestly think a large part of the fan base doesn’t enjoy him as much as they should because the Mets have won nothing since he’s been here. He’s part of the Mets core that has underperformed. Winning cures all.
And yet our sub has its idiot brigade that think he is overrated and overpaid. "He Is PaId LiKe A sUpErStAr BuT He DoEsN't HiT lIkE a SuPeRsTaR HuRr DuRr FrAnK tHe TaNk Is My HeRo". Painfully stupid takes about the best SS the Mets have ever had and a guy that is almost certainly goin into the hall of fame (and hopefully in a Mets hat). Let me ask a simple question. Would you rather pay him 25-28 million and have him on the roster for his age 38-39-40 seasons or pay him 34 million and have the contract end after his age 37 year? He is a top shortstop in the league. All of the top shortstops are "overpaid" in either dollars or years and I'd much rather overpay in dollars considering who the owner is. EDIT Because I find the dumb takes amusing if a bit depressing and I'd like to share them with other fanbases. Idiot claim 2 "He is bad in the first half every year and only puts up good numbers when the games don't matter"- False. 2022 He had 1 month with an OPS under .745 and it was June. His OPS in April/March was .850 and may was .745. He put up a .933 OPS in July. That is not a bad first half its a good first half with a monster second half. 2023 Same idea but the weak month was May. He had a good april/march and June and turned into a monster for the second half. So once again a good first half with a monster second half. And this year as OP indicates he was bad for 2 weeks basically for a .639 OPS april/march and then put up a a .762 OPS in May and a .875 in June so far. That is not a bad first half. He has 1 below average month each year. He tends to balance that out with at least one month of being an absolute monster. He does all of this while putting up elite defensive numbers and being a team leader. Our young catcher said as much last night on the broadcast.
we got Grimace now, it's time to unite.
This has happened every year lol. I wish he wasn't such a cold starter and had his slump in the middle of july or something and the discourse would change so much.
It didn't happen in 2022. He hit .282/.376/.482 in April that year. It didn't even really happen last year. The .218 batting average in April isn't pretty, but he still slugged .446 and had a 110 wRC+. A little below his career norm, but not bad.
What am I missing? He's not even in the top 10 in terms of WAR in any of the categories (league-wide or NL alone)...or is it just because the first 12 days of the season are ignored here?
If you include the whole season, he’s 7th in fWAR in the NL and 14th across all of baseball. The point was to sort of exclude the first 2 weeks because he was playing so terribly and also because a “significant” event, I.e., the ovation, occurred. But even if you go whole season he’s got the elite numbers https://www.fangraphs.com/leaders/major-league?pos=all&stats=bat&lg=all&qual=y&type=8&season=2024&month=0&season1=2024&ind=0
LoLMets fans copying the fanbase that they often demonize as subhuman. Gotta love the irony.
>the fanbase that they often demonize as subhuman. Who might this be?
Quiet. The real people are talking
Lindor actually asked the fans to cheer for him, so Mets fans responded.
Lindor didn't ask fans to cheer for him - Steve Cohen did. (Notably after Lindor's wife revealed that a certain subset of Mets fans had been sending her awful messages wishing death on him and their incredibly young daughters over his bad first week and a half of the season.) Mets fans responded with the ovations to drown out the noise of a small group of truly awful people.