Three Keys to Francisco Lindor Emerging From His Offensive Slumber

The true measure of a player doesn’t happen when times are good — it happens when times are bad. And for Francisco Lindor, the first half of his career with the New York Mets included a lot of bad at the plate.

Being on a new team in one of the game’s biggest media markets, which also happens to be in a different league and division from where he was previously, there were a lot of things to get used to. Throw in signing one of the most lucrative contracts in the sport’s history, and there’s a little extra pressure mixed, as well. Of course, it didn’t help that when he woke up on May 1st, he was sporting an anemic .189/.299/.243 line with just one home run and three RBI through 88 plate appearances, which sussed out to a 60 wRC+.

It wasn’t the kind of start he was looking for, but he showed poise and an ability to believe in his own capabilities to overcome it (more on that later). He’s especially been back to himself over the last month-plus of games. Since June 1st, Lindor is slashing .262/.362/.468 with seven homers, 25 RBI, and a 132 wRC+.

It was slow and steady, but Lindor has actually been consistently digging himself out of that early-season hole since the start of May. His monthly wRC+ numbers are as follows from April through July (so far): 60, 82, 112, 185. Following a similar trajectory, there have been three keys within his game that have unlocked the kind of production we all expected to see from him (and they’re all tied together).

Plate Discipline

While Lindor struggled at the plate, one of the few bright spots was he continued to walk at a decent clip while not striking out a bunch (12.5% strikeout rate and 12.5% walk rate in April). However, he lacked aggressiveness within the strike zone when compared to career numbers.

Heading into 2021, Lindor’s career chase rate sat at 32.4%, while his swing rate on strikes was 70.3%. Here’s a look at how those numbers have progressively gotten better from April through the middle of July (along with corresponding contact rates):

It seemed like Lindor was being a little too patient to start the year, and the continually improved results were brought on by getting more aggressive. As we can see above, it not as if he’s necessarily doing anything out of the ordinary. The shortstop is just getting back to how he’s attacked the zone throughout his career up to this point.

Obviously, this is the start of a chain reaction with another part of his game, which is…

Batted-Ball Profile

…his batted-ball profile. To put it plainly, just about everything was going wrong for Lindor in April, but that’s what happens when you’re in a deep slump. Not only was he lacking his usual aggressiveness, but when he made contact, he was producing too many ground balls and too much weak contact.

His hard-hit rate hasn’t yet reached the levels of recent years. However, his improved plate discipline led to producing batted-ball events that are more likely to bring positive results on a more frequent basis. Here’s a look at how his line-drive rate, ground-ball rate, fly-ball rate, soft-hit rate, and hard-hit rate have looked on a monthly basis in 2021.

These improvements have yielded results in other areas, too, like Lindor’s BABIP. The monthly progression of this number is telling as his ground-ball rate continued to drop: .206, .225, .263, .375. And while ground balls have always been the shortstop’s least productive batted-ball event, that’s been the case this year more than ever.

When he hits a ground ball in 2021, it’s produced a 9 wRC+. That’s just a slight difference from the numbers he’s produced when a line drive (283 wRC+) or fly ball (113 wRC+) is hit.

Confidence In Himself

Following Friday’s blowout win in which Lindor hit his first grand slam as a Met, he gave this telling answer in his post-game press conference:

"I was just listening to see if I was going to get booed…I'm nowhere near my best. So when I do have a little bit of success, I just want to sit back and listen and feed off the crowd again when they cheer"

Francisco Lindor on rounding the bases stoically after his grand slam pic.twitter.com/3HYQwbRdjG

— SNY (@SNYtv) July 10, 2021

This serves as a great reminder that baseball players are human. They may be otherwordly when it comes to what they can do on a baseball field, but they have thoughts and feelings and go through rough patches (mentally and emotionally) just like us. Lindor’s response to that question showed he not only understands the situation, but he’s not going to cover up what he really thinks about it.

That’s why he’s built for the ups and downs the game will bring while playing in New York. Even in the deepest depths of his slump and when he was getting booed, you could tell he was confident in his own ability to figure it out. He’d been there before — maybe not this bad and doing it in Cleveland is different than doing it in New York — but he knows himself well enough to realize it’d end at some point.

It’s this kind of self-awareness that’ll help the next decade in blue and orange be a good one for him. And even though he’s been nowhere near his best, he’s been a crucial contributor in multiple areas — with the glove, with the bat, and in the clubhouse — for a first-place club that’s dealt with a ton of adversity over the first three-and-a-half months of the regular season.

Will his season-long offensive numbers pick up enough to his career norms? It’s unlikely unless he gets absurdly hot for a prolonged period of time. But it’s clear he knows the only thing he has control of is what happens next, not what already took place. That’s the perfect kind of leader the Mets need as they embark on the second half later this week.

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