Francisco Lindor came up big when it mattered most, like an MVP should

In the most important game of the season, Francisco Lindor came thru when it mattered most. The Mets entered the eighth inning trailing by three runs and Lindor had an RBI single which made it 3-2 and he later scored on a shallow SF, which put the Mets ahead, 4-3. Then after the Mets gave up the lead in the bottom of the eighth, Lindor came up again in the ninth and hit a two-run, game-winning homer. It was a majestic way to cap a tremendous season.

In virtually any other season, Lindor’s inspired play would have resulted in an MVP Award, something no Met has ever won. But Shohei Ohtani, freed from having to pitch, put up a monster season, becoming the first player in MLB history to record a 50-50, as he tallied 54 HR and 59 SB. Ohtani played well all season and – as Chris Dial pointed out to me – had an incredible September. In the final month of the year, Ohtani posted a .393/.458/.766 line. That’s a 1.225 OPS over 120 PA.

Prior to that incredible close, Lindor actually was ahead of Ohtani in fWAR. While Ohtani was a beast with a bat in his hand, he was a DH, adding nothing to his case with defense. And Lindor was playing at a Gold Glove level at the most important position. People are always skeptical of defensive numbers. And that skepticism is not unwarranted, mostly as it takes roughly twice as long for the numbers to stabilize defensively.

But it’s not like Lindor played way above his lifetime defensive numbers in 2024. He had a +12 FRV in 2024, the fourth-best mark in his career and the fifth time he posted a double-digit number in Statcast’s main fielding metric, the best publicly available number there is. Among shortstops, Lindor finished second in the majors in FRV, trailing only Dansby Swanson, who notched a +14.

Statcast uses multiple high-speed cameras, each operating at at-least 50 frames per second, to give a much-more accurate defensive rating than what the previous best systems used. Both DRS and UZR use human scorers recording fielding locations by hand. Taking absolutely nothing away from these human scorers, this is simply a case of machines being a better option, no different than ABS systems being better able to call balls and strikes superior to human umpires.

Just to use one example of the three most-notable defensive systems in the public domain, let’s look at Harrison Bader. Most people view Bader as a strong defender and to the best of my knowledge, absolutely no one was complaining about his defensive play for the Mets in 2024. Bader had a (-1) DRS this year and a 0.2 UZR. Those numbers track with one another pretty well and show a player who was essentially average out there in center field.

But Statcast’s FRV had him with a +10 – showing Bader as a player who was a definite asset in the field.

And it was a similar story this year with Lindor. The advanced systems of DRS and UZR both saw Lindor pretty much the same, as a slightly above-average fielder. DRS had him at +2 and UZR had him as +3.5 for the year. And we know that FRV had him at +12.

We use the best tools we have available to rate players. And when an improvement comes along – well, we use that, instead. For 15 or so years, UZR and DRS were the best tools we had to measure defense. But an improvement came along in FRV and we need to use that now, instead. It doesn’t mean that either UZR or DRS are “bad.” Rather, technology introduced something better. Embrace the (relatively) new better.

FanGraphs’ version of WAR uses Statcast numbers, while Baseball-Reference uses DRS. And that’s why Lindor finished with a 7.6 fWAR, compared to a 7.0 bWAR.

Lindor’s 7.6 fWAR is the fourth-best mark in team history. David Wright in 2007 had an 8.4 mark, the best ever by a Met. Next was 1998 John Olerud (8.1) and third is 2006 Carlos Beltran, who notched a 7.8 fWAR.

In terms of the 2024 MVP race, Lindor had two things working in his favor. The first one was his strong defense at a premier position. And the other was that Ohtani was a great player on a great team. If you subtracted Ohtani from the Dodgers, they’d probably make the playoffs anyway. It’s harder to say the same thing about Lindor.

Except when Lindor sat out for all but one inning for a 10-game stretch here in September, the Mets didn’t fall apart. Instead, they went 6-4, with six of those games coming against the Phillies and another against the Braves.

Ohtani blew past Lindor in fWAR with his great September, meaning Lindor no longer had an objective case for MVP. And the subjective case with what he meant to the Mets making the playoffs took a hit with his 10-game absence and the team playing at a .600 rate without him.

Still, if anyone had the slightest bit of doubt about either Lindor in general or his 2024 MVP candidacy in particular, Game #161 of the regular season, with the playoffs on the line and playing on the road against a team that has tortured the Mets for 30-plus years now, should have dismissed all doubts.

Much like with the All-Star game, which Lindor did not make, he won’t walk away with the MVP trophy to validate his great season, either. But if there’s a Mets fan on the planet who doesn’t recognize Lindor’s greatness – that person should be mocked endlessly. When you consider how awful he was at the beginning of the year, the fact that Lindor finished with a 136 wRC+ and a 7.6 fWAR is nothing short of remarkable.

Right now, the only thing Lindor has left to do is to carry over his greatness to the postseason. In 2022, Lindor had an .833 OPS yet the Mets fell in the Wild Card round. Now, the challenge is for him to play even better and lead the Mets past the first round.

*****

The Mets’ playoff game starts at 5:30 p.m. Join us in the Game Chatter — https://substack.com/chat/1934025/post/c66bfb31-057c-437d-afe2-714f944bab7a