Displaying items by tag: Francisco Lindor

So now that Francisco Lindor has officially been named the next captain of the New York Mets by Yahoo!, we can also bid adieu to Pete Alonso at the end of the season. Now, of course, it really didn't happen as reported by Yahoo!, but if it did, it would be the end of Alonso's tenure with the Mets.

Now I loved Lindor before he even became a Met. And I was ecstatic when they got him, and extended him with a hefty contract. And he’s my favorite Met.

But I don’t believe that he should, at this time, be named captain of the New York Mets. The timing would seem to indicate that there is a definitive mindset with regard to Alonso and his place on this team.

And what good is naming a captain going to do anyway? A leader leads. That’s it. At this point, given the changes in the dynamics of the game and how players behave and how they are treated, and the various roles in the clubhouse and how they have evolved over the years, the “role” of captain is truly meaningless. It’s an honorary status bestowed upon someone who is believed to be deserving of such reverence.

The New York Mets are off to a great start finishing the month of April with a record of 21-10, tied with the Los Angeles Dodgers for the best record in MLB to this point. Just as a reminder, the Mets had their best start to the season in 1972, with a record of 23-7 after 30 games. So before you start getting ahead of yourselves, the Mets finished in third place with a record of 83-73 in 1972.

With very few exceptions, you are never as good as you are when you are your very best, and never as bad as you are when you are at your worst. The Mets have rallied out to the 21-10 record without exactly being at their very best, and certainly not at their strongest.

Overachieving. The New York Mets were not expected to be contenders. But they somehow came back from the dead and surged to a berth in the National League Championship Series against the eventual World Champion Los Angeles Dodgers. Nobody could have predicted that after starting off at 0-5 and stumbling and bumbling to 11 games under .500 early on, that the Mets would actually finish 16 games OVER .500 with 89 wins.

So where do they go from here?

Sometimes it all comes together. You have a favorite player wearing your favorite number on their uniform jersey. I have loved, absolutely loved, Francisco Lindor since he began his career with the Cleveland Indians. And for the longest time I truly believed he would be yet another one of those opposing players who I would watch and root for, and dream of him playing for the Mets someday. So when the Mets pulled the trigger and brought Lindor to Queens, it was certainly gratifying. And to have him wearing my favorite number on top of that…well…no fan could be happier.

I actually came to love the No. 12, believe it or not, because I really liked the way it looked in the full block style on the old Mets road uniforms when I saw Ken Boswell wearing it. Boswell was not my favorite player, but he was one of my favorites. It bothered me to see it assigned to a guy like Jack Heidemann (I know, who is he?) when he came to the Mets. And I got excited when Lee Mazzilli came up and wore it his first year, and then was disappointed when he swapped numbers with John Stearns and took the No. 16. Some very obscure players wore my No. 12 over the years, although there were some really good players like Tommy Davis, Stearns, Ron Darling, Willie Randolph and Roberto Alomar. Even Cleon Jones, who will forever be associated with No. 21, wore it, after first wearing the No. 34, believe it or not.

So I decided to take a look at the top player at each position who wore No. 12 during his Mets career:

It’s exciting to begin the new era with such fervor, including a blockbuster trade with the Cleveland Indians to get an All Star the caliber of Francisco Lindor. Lindor comes to the Mets along with front line starter Carlos Carrasco in exchange for the two talented players who were to be vying for the starting shortstop job in 2021 – Amed Rosario and Andres Gimenez – along with a couple of prospects. Lindor is the prize, the impact player the Mets coveted and needed.

He is 27 years old, is a four-time All Star, two-time Gold Glover and one of the best all-around players in baseball. He may be coming off a down year that saw him hit .258 with eight home runs in the shortened season, but he averaged 34 homers with a .278 batting average and .856 OPS from 2017-19. The downside of it…Lindor can be a free agent after the season.

Carrasco…the proverbial “throw in” in the deal, is 33 years old, and was the 2020 American League Comeback Player of the Year, returning from a chronic myeloid leukemia diagnosis to start 12 games for the Indians with a 2.91 ERA. We’ve been down this road before with the Indians. Lest we forget that the Mets fans got their hopes up when some pretty good All Star second basemen made their way to Flushing…only to flop.