It’s no secret that Francisco Lindor is struggling so far for the New York Mets. The $341 million man is off to the worst extended start of his career, and patience is running thin from Mets fans.
While the surface stats show a struggle for Lindor with little signs of hope, when you take a deeper look at the numbers behind the shortstop’s start, there’s reason for hope.
Straight up, Lindor is hitting .217/.308/.321 to start his Mets tenure, which adds up to a .629 OPS. While there’s no denying the general stats are ugly, several of Lindor’s metrics and peripherals show reason to expect a breakout soon.
According to FanGraphs, Lindor’s Hard Hit Rate sits at 41.3, meaning he is hitting the ball hard 41.3% of the time. If the season were to end today, this would be the best rate of Lindor’s career.
His walk rate is at a career high at 10.8%, and his strikeout rate is holding steady at 15.5%, which is a minimal increase from 15.4% last season and 15.0% the year before. For his career, his BABIP has sat roughly 19 points above his actual batting average, and that has held true in 2021 with his BABIP coming in at .242 (25 points above his average).
Essentially, Lindor is still taking good at-bats (if not better) and hasn’t lost any speed coming out of the box.
The troubling numbers come when you look at Lindor’s power statistics. His ISO (slugging percentage minus batting average) is sitting at .103, which would be a career low and less than half of what it was in 2019.
While his hard hit rate is near a career high, his barrel rate has dropped from 9.1% in 2018 all the way down to 5.8% so far this year. His average launch angle was a solid 13.5 last season, but sits at 11.4 so far this year.
Most simply, his line drive rate is at a career-low 16.1% and his ground ball rate sits at an eye-boggling 46.3%. Those numbers for Lindor are concerning, to say the least, and they become a bigger and bigger problem the deeper into the season he goes without correcting them.
The simple conclusion that can be reached is that Lindor is still taking good at-bats, but more often than not, the results of those at-bats are hard ground balls on the infield. Hard ground balls are one of the easiest ways to get out in the majors, and neutralizes his speed coming out of the box.
Recently, Lindor has shown some promising signs of life at the plate.
During Tuesday’s game in Arizona, Lindor tripled on a pitch that left the bat at 104 MPH and traveled 430 feet. The ball had a 22-degree launch angle off the bat, and an xBA (expected batting average of the ball put in play) of .800.
In Monday’s game against the Diamondbacks, he ripped a double into left-center field at 99.7 MPH and a lunch angle of 28 degrees. The ball traveled 411 feet, and had an xBA of .610 on it. He also ripped a single that left the bat at 104 MPH and carried an xBA of .820.
In their single game series against Atlanta on Saturday night, Lindor homered off a fastball for the first time this year. He took the pitch into the right field bullpen at 97.5 MPH with a launch angle of 28 degrees. Those added up to an xBA on the ball of .370.
Lindor has shown signs of life at the plate recently, mainly because he is starting to lift pitches that he hits hard. If he can keep this new trend going, there’s no reason to think Lindor won’t break out soon and settle into a groove that you would expect from a $341 million man.
