Francisco Lindor stepped into the batters’ box at Citizens Bank Park on Sunday with trade rumors circling like buzzards over a July pasture, and he did what ballplayers do when the noise gets loud: he swung.
The New York Mets shortstop launched a two-out, two-run home run off Phillies starter Alan Rangel in the opening frame, depositing a 92-mph four-seam fastball 420 feet into the second deck. It was his sixth homer of the season and it opened the scoring in what became a 5-0 Mets lead by the second inning — a cushion Lindor padded himself with a run-scoring single.
Not a bad way to answer the phone when it won’t stop ringing.
The Mets sit at 41-58, dead last in the NL East, and the front office has reportedly opened the doors for business. According to Bob Nightengale, the club has five untouchable names — Juan Soto, Nolan McLean, Christian Scott, Carson Benge, and A.J. Ewing. Everyone else, Lindor included, could be had for the right price.
But here’s where it gets complicated, the way a fourth-and-long always does. Lindor carries full no-trade protection. He’s 32 years old, batting .205 on the year, and he’s owed $160 million after this season at $32.4 million annually through 2031. That’s a lot of hay to move, and rival executives told Nightengale they believe any deal is far more likely to come this winter, when front offices have room to maneuver, than before the July 30 deadline.
So the Mets are stuck between a bad record and a contract nobody’s eager to swallow whole. And Lindor — a five-time All-Star and four-time Silver Slugger who hasn’t looked anything like the franchise cornerstone the Mets traded for — is left to play through the kind of scrutiny that’ll wear a man down faster than two-a-days in August.
Sunday, at least, he looked like somebody who’d forgotten the chatter existed. The homer was his sixth of the year. The single drove in another run. For one afternoon in South Philly, the .205 average and the contract albatross and the deadline clock all took a back seat to a ball leaving the yard.
The film doesn’t lie. Lindor can still hit it a mile when he squares one up. Whether that’s enough to change the Mets’ calculus between now and July 30 — or whether it just makes the offseason conversation more interesting — is a problem for the front office to sort out. Lindor’s job is to swing the bat, and on this Sunday, he swung it like a man who’d heard all the talk and decided to let the baseball do the answering.