the Mets\u2019 3-2 streak-breaking win over the Twins<\/a> on Wednesday night. He was able to muster enough speed to score safely, but he stayed on the ground for an extra beat after sliding feet-first into home.<\/p>\n\u201cI knew something happened,\u201d he said. \u201cI was just hoping it wasn\u2019t that bad.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lindor was off to a slow start, hitting .226 with a .314 on-base percentage and .669 OPS so far this season. More unusual were the mental lapses he\u2019s shown in the field, like forgetting the number of outs or not charging a routine ground ball.<\/p>\n
Lindor strained his right calf back in 2019 while preparing for spring training with Cleveland. That injury was announced on February 8, with Lindor missing 18 regular-season games and debuting on April 20. He did say this injury didn\u2019t feel as severe in the immediate aftermath as that one did.<\/p>\n
This has been as difficult a physical stretch as Lindor has endured in the major leagues. He had surgery on his elbow to start the offseason and surgery on the hamate bone in his hand at the start of spring training. Now he\u2019s suffered this calf strain 24 games into a season already teetering on disaster for the Mets.<\/p>\n
Wednesday\u2019s win snapped a 12-game losing streak that was the club\u2019s longest in 24 years. Their 8-16 start is their worst through 24 games since 1983.<\/p>\n
With Lindor out, the Mets expect to initially give Ronny Mauricio the bulk of the playing time at shortstop. That\u2019s a big opportunity for Mauricio, who has seen only sporadic playing time in the majors since debuting in 2023. The switch-hitting Mauricio owns a .683 career OPS but has been much better as a left-handed hitter than from the right side: His OPS as a lefty is .772 compared to .370 as a righty.<\/p>\n
Mendoza said Mauricio will get some opportunities against left-handed pitching, but the team will still consider matchups in constructing its everyday lineup. Bo Bichette, who moved back to short on Wednesday night when Lindor went out, will also see some time there.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m looking forward to seeing him at shortstop and helping us win games,\u201d Lindor said of Mauricio. \u201cHe\u2019s a great competitor and he brings a good energy. He\u2019s going to play well.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need him to step up, obviously,\u201d said Mendoza.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK \u2014 A day after getting one superstar back from a calf strain, the Mets put another…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":603238,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[21850,363,1189,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-603237","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-fantasy-baseball","9":"tag-mlb","10":"tag-new-york-mets","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/603237","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=603237"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/603237\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/603238"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=603237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=603237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=603237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}