With his home run that clinched Monday night’s game, Francisco Lindor has now hit safely in 19 of his last 20 games, with six multi-hit games in that stretch. During that streak, he has 91 PA and is slashing .337/.396/.602 with 11 XBH, including 5 HR. He’s been nothing short of terrific, even if it’s gotten slightly lost behind similar good stretches by Pete Alonso and Starling Marte.
Overall for the year, Lindor has a 123 OPS+, the second-best mark of his career, behind only the 132 he put up in 2018, the season he finished sixth in the MVP race. Currently, he has a 3.5 bWAR, which leads the Mets, and a 4.0 fWAR, also the top mark on the club. He’s making the memory of his 2020 campaign, along with the first two months of 2021, look like a distant memory.
Yet, it still feels like he’s not a fan favorite. There was the awful start to his Met career, the blowup with Jeff McNeil and his participation in the thumbs down kerfuffle that could be influencing popular opinion. There’s the dyed hair and the always-changing flashy shoes and gloves that might be turning people off. There’s the constant chatter, often of a positive nature, with the opponents, which perhaps rubs people the wrong way.
While recognizing all of those things, my opinion is that Lindor hasn’t been fully embraced by the fan base because of the one-two punch of his big contract and his pedestrian batting average.
When the Mets traded for Lindor, the only reason he was available was that he was an impending free agent and would likely command a deal beyond what Cleveland would be comfortable giving him. There was at least some concern that he would play for the Mets for one year and then leave via free agency. But right before the 2021 season started, the team gave him a 10/$341 deal, which spoke as much to the spending power of new owner Steve Cohen as it did to the skills of Lindor.
In terms of average annual value, that ranks third on the Mets, behind the deals for Max Scherzer and Jacob deGrom. But in terms of total dollars, it easily ranks first. When you see people mention Lindor’s salary, it’s never AAV. Instead, he’s the $341 million guy. It certainly helps me to look at MLB salary as if it’s Monopoly money, not real dollars. But not everyone is willing to overlook the reality of it all.
And when you know the guy’s making $341 million, you expect quite a bit. Of course, it’s a two-way street. The owner wanted to make a splash and this contract has to be viewed in terms of, “it’s a new day for the Mets,” at least as much as it was for the particular player. Lindor is one of the top shortstops in the game. But was he twice as good as Javier Baez, who signed for $140 million?
But along with the money comes the problem of the average fan still viewing the game thru the prism of batting average. It’s especially tough for the greybeards, who had it drummed into our heads that AVG was the most important stat of them all. In the pre-internet days, it was a treat to get the Sunday paper, which would print a list of all the hitters, sorted by their AVG.
There’s nothing wrong with AVG as a statistic. It certainly tells you something and that something is worthwhile to know. But at the end of the day, it just simply isn’t as important as we were once led to believe. You can hit .230, like 1988 Howard Johnson, and still be a valuable player. Or you can hit .290, like 1973 Felix Millan, and be a below-average offensive player.
Lindor has a .261 AVG, which isn’t great and isn’t horrible. In fact, if you wanted to describe it, you’d probably use the graphic the SNY telecasts show when a runner advances due to defensive indifference and the fielders look at each other, shrug and go, “Meh.”
While a .261 AVG isn’t awful, it isn’t $341 million material, either.
My opinion is that if Lindor had the same OBP and the same SLG but arrived at those numbers with Millan’s .290 AVG that people would view him much-more favorably.
According to ESPN, Lindor is on target for 29 HR this season. How many shortstops, guys who played at least 100 games at the position, hit at least 25 homers in a season in the decade of the 1970s? If you guessed one, you’d be correct. Of course, it’s a different time and homers are more common than they were roughly 50 years ago.
But if you can recognize that it’s a different time, you can recognize that we need different ways to evaluate how good a player is. This is not a suggestion to ignore AVG. Rather, it’s a suggestion that you make it the fourth or fifth thing you look at, rather than the first.
Among those who’ve played at least 50 games this year at shortstop, Lindor ranks sixth with his 123 OPS+. And he ranks fourth with his 4.0 fWAR. The shortstops ranked higher in WAR are all having BABIP-fueled seasons. Dansby Swanson has a .379 BABIP, Trea Turner has a .348 and Xander Bogaerts has a .386 mark. Meanwhile, Lindor has a .290 BABIP. Lindor is more likely than the others to maintain his current fWAR moving forward.
My hope is that everyone can look past Lindor’s contract and his AVG and see the type of year he’s having. Before joining the Mets, Lindor had a 119 OPS+ — that’s the player the Mets should have been expecting and he’s been better than that so far this season. He should end up with an fWAR in the 6.5 range and if everything breaks right, he could hit a 7.0 mark. Since 2000, there have only been a dozen seasons where a SS posted a 7.0 or greater fWAR and it’s been done only four times since the Mets last made the World Series in 2015.
Not bad for a guy hitting .261, is it?
*****
The only SS in the 1970s to reach 25 HR in a season was Rico Petrocelli, who hit 29 in 1970.
Maybe he’s worth 30 mil per year now, but will he be worth anywhere near that much toward the latter part of the contract, in his mid-30s? I doubt it.
In my view, I don’t really care what someone gets paid unless it’s weakening the caliber of player on the rest of the team. With Cohen, we don’t know this to be the case. It’s his money, not ours, anyways.
If you consider that the value of 1.0 WAR is about $8M (source: various google search results from apparently reputable sites), then Lindor would be expected to deliver a WAR of 43 over 10 years, or 4.3/year. There’s an argument that some of the “reputable sources” make that the $/WAR for an elite player higher than average (e.g. a 6 WAR player would be paid more than twice the $/WAR of a 3 WAR player.)
Also, inflation plays a real role in a long term contract. Given the perceived rate of MLB salary inflation, the $/WAR in 10 years is likely to be closer to $16M vs the $8M we see today, further reducing the 43 WAR “obligation” that Lindor needs to deliver.
Bottom line: if the Mets win a single WS during this 10 year timeframe and Lindor plays a significant role, his legacy and value will be firmly established in Metsland forever.
Its sunk money. And its sunk Cohen money. Worrying about salraies is so Wilponian in age. So I agree, lets just forget about it. Its wholly irrelevant. Few contracts for players in their mid to late 30s are worth it. Thats the cost of doing business.
Meanwhile, Lindor has been nothing short of awesome. Im not sure who isnt embracing Lindor. I mean this is the best team the Mets have fielded in nearly 20 years and Lindor is an absolute centerpiece of it. I listened to Buck after the game, and let me tell ya, he has nothing but the highest praise for Lindor. Hes 28 this season, and its reasonable to say he will be quite productive for 5-7 more years. Hes out there every day. We dont have to see shot like Tejada, Flores, Qunitanilla, Reynolds, etc there for years. Sure, we all could see that Gimenez was going to lap Rosario and looked bright – but Cohen wanted more than just Lindor’s numbers. And here we are sitting in Aug on pace for >100 Wins and an hour from now were get the addition of a multiple CY winner. I sort of like what I see – all around the diamond.
Francisco Lindor has the Mayor’s full endorsement.
LFGM
At 67 and a Met’s fan since opening day 1964 (I was there!), I’ll readily agree to being one of those old fuddy-duddy’s regarding how I view statistics. I have learned to recognize the importance of the new stats like fWAR & bWAR, though I really wish I knew how they are calculated. For now, I just have to take people’s word for those numbers.
And maybe that’s the stumbling block for geezers like me.
Aging Bull and ChrisF have the right take about all this in regards to Lindor ( a great term, Wilponian). Good teams and an occasional championship is what should really matter to us fans. Let’s go Mets!
Here’s how it’s calculated. It’s not a simple computation
https://library.fangraphs.com/misc/war/
Thanks Brian. I’ve seen these sites before and tried doing the math……like I said, I’ll have to take peoples word on a players WAR.
It also is interesting to see the WAR values placed on former players…..again, I wish I could do the numbers.
Think of it this way – you don’t have to know how a car works in order to use it properly and get utility from it.
It is hard to separate the salary from the expectations, but it is possible.
The Mets are a team built to win now, a World Series contender. Most teams of this caliber should have a stud #3 hitter and a solid or above fielding SS. Lindor happens to be both regardless of his pay.
He has been red hot and dominant over the last month, kudos. Over the season, he has well below Average OPS for #3 hitters and most fielding stats have him below average to average. The season is 162 games, so school is out.
Regarding the 10 year deal and dollars, if he provides .800 or above OPS and average to above defense through his prime years, he was worth the money. Time will tell.
To the extent he is liked by the fans, his start was rocky (raccoon, excuse the pun, thumbs down) but I don’t think he is despised and clearly it takes a bit longer for an imported guy to feel the love vs. a home grown guy. That’s usually how it works.
Thank you again, Brian, for articulating thoughts hiding in the fog of my brain.
I have a 7 yr old granddaughter who is a big, and amazingly knowledgable Mets fan. Her favorite players are “Squirrel” & “Polar Bear” because, well, because she likes squirrels & polar bears. Her favorite pitcher is Edwin Diaz because “he strikes everybody out” {she verbally capitalizes “everybody” which I am not allowed to do here).
When I asked her if there was any Met she didn’t like, her opinion was “well I don’t like Francisco’s hair–but he’s a good player.” She also thinks Brandon Nimo “has too many teeth”–I’m not sure what that’s all about.
Ha! The downside of smiling all of the time – people see your teeth.