PORT ST. LUCIE, FLa. \u2014 Francisco Lindor, the longest-tenured New York Mets player, says he appreciates Steve Cohen\u2019s declaration this that there will never be a team captain under his ownership.<\/p>\n
\u201cI respect it. This is definitely a Steve, front-office type decision. At the end of the day, being named captain or not, I\u2019m still going to act the same,\u201d Lindor told MLB.com in a story published Thursday. \u201cThis isn\u2019t something that will make me different. I\u2019m glad he put everything to bed, so that way we can stop talking about this. And move on.\u201d<\/p>\n
The 32-year-old shortstop and five-time All-Star is going into his sixth season with the Mets and is signed through 2031.<\/p>\n
New York is entering its third season under manager Carlos Mendoza. The Mets allowed\u00a0popular slugger Pete Alonso and star closer Edwin D\u00edaz to leave as free agents\u00a0and traded two homegrown Mets: outfielder Brandon Nimmo and versatile veteran Jeff McNeil.<\/p>\n
In his first meeting with reporters at spring training this week, Cohen said not having a captain was his decision. He characterized the clubhouse as being unique, and that he prefers to let it sort itself out each year.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust my own views on how I want a locker room to be,\u201d Cohen said. \u201cMy view is every year the team\u2019s different and let the team kind of figure it out in the locker room rather than having a designation. Having a captain in baseball doesn\u2019t happen often. It\u2019s actually unusual.\u201d<\/p>\n
The only captains in Mets history have been Keith Hernandez, Gary Carter, John Franco and David Wright, whose playing career ended in 2018.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not where they want to go,\u201d Lindor told MLB.com. \u201cI respect it, I understand it and I\u2019m on board. It\u2019s just one of those where it\u2019s like, I\u2019m going to focus on baseball. I feel like we\u2019ve got leaders (without) captains and all that stuff. The clubhouse is the clubhouse. Let\u2019s just play baseball, and let\u2019s focus on winning.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lindor, long considered one of the team leaders, is rehabbing after surgery Feb. 11 to repair a broken hamate bone in his left hand, which could threaten his status for the start of this season. The surgery followed an evaluation by a hand specialist after he\u00a0experienced soreness\u00a0in the area around his hand and wrist.<\/p>\n
In 160 games last season, Lindor had an MLB-high 762 plate appearances while hitting .267 with 31 homers, 86 RBIs and 31 steals. He was left\u00a0off Puerto Rico\u2019s roster\u00a0for the upcoming World Baseball Classic over insurance coverage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PORT ST. LUCIE, FLa. \u2014 Francisco Lindor, the longest-tenured New York Mets player, says he appreciates Steve Cohen\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":162906,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[3817,171,173,172,110,77903],"class_list":["post-162905","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-port-st-lucie","tag-mlb","tag-port-st-lucie","tag-port-st-lucie-headlines","tag-port-st-lucie-news","tag-sports","tag-top-stories-trt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162905","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=162905"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162905\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/162906"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=162905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=162905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=162905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}