The Mets need to fight the perception that conflict is the enemy

Recently, the worst-kept secret of the lousy 2021 campaign for the Mets was finally put to bed. Yes, Virginia, there was a fight between Francisco Lindor and Jeff McNeil. Lindor had tried to come up with a cover story for the kerfuffle, claiming that the two were engaged in a discussion about the identity of a large rodent. No one believed it then, both Lindor and McNeil homered the next day and there were no further public displays of animosity between the two players going forward. If not for the New York Post story earlier in the week, it’s doubtful any of us would have dwelled much on it going forward.

But nearly six months after the incident, The Post’s Mike Puma breaks the story. In one way, it’s encouraging to see a journalist dig to get the story out that no one wanted to be told. It’s just that if you had a choice of a dozen stories you’d want to hear about the Mets, this likely wasn’t one of them. Oh well, guess we’ll just be grateful for any offseason content we get. Anyway, here’s the basis for the fight:

The shortstop Lindor, frustrated by the second baseman’s latest positioning gaffe and their ensuing argument, according to a club source, grabbed McNeil by the throat and pinned him against a wall in the tunnel. Before the situation could escalate, Mets players hearing the commotion arrived to break it up.

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McNeil had two previous defensive positioning miscues involving Lindor, two weeks earlier at Wrigley Field. At some point — either before or after the series at Wrigley — manager Luis Rojas had threatened to bench McNeil if he didn’t get on board with the team’s shifting. Rojas, according to sources, made good on that threat, but it’s unclear if the benching occurred on April 22 in Chicago or April 25 at home against the Nationals — McNeil was absent from the starting lineup for both games.

Lindor’s anger with the situation apparently stemmed as much from McNeil’s dismissive attitude toward the positioning issues as the actual mistakes.

When the Mets acquired Lindor there were all kinds of stories about his smile and his bubbly personality. Then, in Spring Training, we saw him taking charge in defensive drills, helping teammates, including McNeil, with techniques to use in various circumstances. Everything seemed positive, at least until the season started and Lindor couldn’t buy a hit. To be fair, McNeil wasn’t hitting, either.

Yet in the first real blowup of his Mets career, it seems that Lindor was more worried about protecting his “bubbly personality,” than saying he was standing up for his manager and trying to get his teammate on board with how they were supposed to play the game. Perhaps you could argue that he was protecting McNeil as much as he was protecting his image. But my take is that most New Yorkers would have been glad to hear that one of their players wasn’t going to put up with nonsense from a colleague.

Maybe Lindor didn’t feel that five weeks into his Mets tenure was the time to publicly rip a teammate. But part of being a leader is doing what you know to be right, regardless of how unpopular it may be in the moment. One could suggest that’s exactly what McNeil was doing in disregarding the team’s new shifting mentality. But the Mets had been consistently in the bottom third of defensive metrics from McNeil’s arrival, so it’s hard to argue that they should have maintained the status quo.

My opinion is that McNeil wasn’t being a team player and he didn’t have any type of case that he was right and everyone else was wrong.

It seems we live – in a sporting world, at least – in a time where everyone is afraid of conflict. While no one should actively seek out or create conflict, you shouldn’t try to pretend that everything is always perfect on the Good Ship Lollipop, either. Conflict is indicative of a problem and you try to solve the problem through a variety of ways. Hopefully you don’t go to DEFCON 1 at the first sign of a problem. But if McNeil’s refusal to go along with the team’s defensive strategy had been going on for weeks, like Puma claims, then Lindor didn’t do that. It’s reasonable to assume that there had been multiple attempts to verbally get him to be where he was supposed to be.

Let’s say there were verbal pleas to get McNeil on board with the program. Then let’s say that Rojas did indeed bench McNeil over this issue. And neither of those avenues produced the desired results. What are you supposed to do? Lindor saw a teammate rebellious for all the wrong reasons and a manager who didn’t give more than a token disciplinary reaction and, literally, took matters into his own hands.

And what about Rojas, the alleged communication specialist? Why couldn’t he get McNeil to go along with the team’s shifting regimen? Why did he allow one player to choke another player and get off without any consequences? You could point out how Rojas didn’t allow this to become back page fodder for weeks and that’s where his communication skills really shined. Call me crazy but I would have been much more impressed if he publicly benched McNeil for insubordination and heavily fined Lindor for battery.

There’s a lot of blame to go around and different people will give wildly different percentages to the various participants. It’s curious to me that there weren’t additional players involved in this issue. Where are the team leaders in this? Maybe the pitchers didn’t want to get involved because it was a hitter/fielder problem. But where was Pete Alonso or Michael Conforto or Dominic Smith – all guys who had been on the team for more than five weeks?

Watching this drama unfold during the game, my take was that it couldn’t be that serious because the cameras had a shot in the dugout shortly after multiple guys ran into the corridor towards the clubhouse and there was Conforto, all by himself, at the railing just looking out at the field. In hindsight, this was a very odd place for him to be. It seems a leader would have been talking to Lindor or McNeil or even one of the coaches – trying to create peace or a plan to move forward.

It took two weeks after the incident before Lindor started hitting. It took that time, along with two more months before Conforto rebounded. It didn’t seem like McNeil ever did except for a two-week period. Now, Rojas is gone and few will be surprised if Conforto is on another team in 2022. Nor would it be a huge shock if McNeil was traded in the offseason. Only Lindor is guaranteed to return and it’s tough to predict that this will be a watershed moment for him.

But at least he cared and tried to do something.

If you watched baseball in the 1970s, you know there were three teams that were regular participants in the World Series. The Reds won the pennant in 1970 and 1972 and the World Series in 1975 and 1976. The A’s won the World Series in three consecutive seasons, from 1972-74. And the Yankees won the pennant in 1976 and the World Series in 1977 and 1978. The latter two teams were no strangers to conflict.

By itself, conflict is not the enemy. It’s how the team reacts to the conflict. No one cares if everyone gets along from February to October if you finish under .500 for the season. And no one cares if you argue during the year and make the playoffs. Sure, it’s easier if everyone gets along and you play well. But the goal should be to assemble a team that excels, not one where no one rocks the boat.

And no one should know this more than Mets fans, who watched a team willing to fight everyone, including themselves, yet won 108 games during the season and ended with a World Series championship. But the Mets then looked to get rid of everyone with a personality and they haven’t matched that season since.

Lindor fought a teammate who he thought wasn’t playing the game right. Javier Baez rebounded from his self-inflicted PR nightmare to be one of the club’s top hitters in the second half of the season. To me, these are the players I want to cheer for, ones who aren’t afraid of conflict and then who rally and perform their best when things are rough and circumstances aren’t ideal. You know, like in the playoffs and the World Series.

Reggie Jackson was on both the A’s and the Yankees in the 1970s and his teams won five World Series in that decade. There’s no doubt that Jackson was in the middle of controversies for both teams in this span. But he was the MVP of two separate World Series and has a lifetime 1.212 OPS in the Fall Classic. A small-sample mirage? Perhaps. But he was a guy who never was intimidated by the big moment and came through consistently in his prime.

The Mets had a chance to draft Jackson but passed on him. How different things would have been if he was on the club with prime Tom Seaver in the late 60s and early 70s, even if M. Donald Grant wouldn’t have signed him to a big-dollar extension.

Perhaps if the Mets had a World Series win in the 70s with the controversial Jackson, along with a World Series win with the rough-and-tumble ’86 squad, they wouldn’t be so scared of conflict. Running scared of conflict is no way to construct a club. Because things are never rosy for 162 games, to say nothing of the playoffs and World Series.