Architects sweat details. Baseball presidents of operations are architects. They try to cover even the most minor holes of a roster, scour data and science for any perceived incremental edge in performance and deploy armies of whipsmart recent college grads who should be working in Silicon Valley to pour through monotonous video to figure out if a pitcher has the smallest of tells in his mannerisms about what pitch might be coming next.
And then championship baseball laughs at such micromanagement. When the game is at its nail-biting, stomach-churning best, it is reduced to how a 10-year-old views it: the superstar player coming up big in the biggest of spots. Simple. Pure. Analog. Backyard dreams, only under massive candlepower and five million people watching.
“It’s the brilliance of baseball,” said David Stearns, the architect of the New York Mets. “Baseball finds the moment. And then special players rise to that moment.
“And we saw that.”
Game 4 of the National League Division Series came down to one such unforgettable moment. Bases loaded. One out. Sixth inning. The Philadelphia Phillies, hanging on for their 2024 lives, leading the New York Mets, 1–0, at Citi Field. It was a spot made for Francisco Lindor, the Mets shortstop and franchise pillar. It was the spot that would give the Mets a chance to play for the National League pennant and for Lindor to ascend to legendary postseason status.
“I knew he was going to come up and do something special,” said Mark Vientos, the on-deck batter who watched his teammate, friend and mentor walk to the plate. How could he know such a thing?
“Because he’s Francisco Lindor,” Vientos said. “Because when you’re the best player on the field, when the moment is perfect for you, you’re going to come through. And honestly, before the game, I knew he was due to do something big. I knew it. I had a feeling.
“It just … it’s just that baseball is so romantic in that way. And he’s the man on the field. I knew he was going to do it.”
A basketball team can call timeout and design a play to allow their best player to take the last shot. A football team knows the ball will be in the quarterback’s hands, and he and the staff can decide where it goes from there. A baseball team is at the mercy of the infinite loop known as the batting order. That and the baseball gods decide to whom the big moment belongs. They aligned in perfection on this night.
Batting against Carlos Estevez, Lindor began by easily taking a 100.3 mph fastball for a ball. He fouled off the next one, a fastball at 100.1 mph.
“I felt like I got a good one early and I missed it,” he said. “I was just trying to do what the other boys did, which is get on base.”
A third heater followed, this one at 99.8 mph well out of the strike zone for ball two.
The pattern was obvious. Estevez was going to lean on his best pitch to get himself out of this mess. After seeing three fastballs at 99 mph and above, Lindor knew what was coming.
The fourth straight fastball from Estevez crackled at 99.4 miles per hour. Lindor has been playing major league baseball for 10 years. Until this week, he had only four extra-base hits in his career on pitches as firm as 99.3 mph. Then in NLDS Game 3 he scalded a double off an Estevez tablet at 99.3 mph. And now this chance, the biggest of them all.
You don't need coffee.
— x - New York Mets (@Mets) October 10, 2024
Just @HowieRose's call of Francisco Lindor's Grand Slam. pic.twitter.com/iID6G8wcrl
Lindor smashed it 109.5 mph. He had never hit a home run that hard this year. Then again, he had never been on such a stage this year. It sailed through the darkness of the cool evening, over the wall and into the pages of postseason lore. Grand slam. Citi Field shook with an explosion of joy and love for Lindor.
Here is the universe of players who hit a postseason grand slam in the sixth inning or later that turned a deficit into a clinching victory:
That’s it. The series was effectively over. The score would not change. One swing from Lindor and the Mets won, 4–1. Fifteen years after the place opened, the Mets finally got around to christening Citi Field with a champagne celebration. It only fit that the one who presided over the ceremony was their $341 million shortstop.
“I learned a lot about him this year,” Stearns said. “I learned how seriously he takes his craft. I learned how much he cares. And, yeah, how he’s gotten big hits. It’s been incredibly impressive.”
After a trade from Cleveland, Lindor worked out his 10-year contract over a deal with owner Steve Cohen.
“We had dinner in Palm Beach,” Cohen said.
Which restaurant?
“I actually forgot,” Cohen said. “Some Italian restaurant. The food wasn’t that good.
“He’s a great guy. We got along great. And listen, I told him I was all in.
“You know, something you can tell is he’s just calm. You know, like some people can slow the game down? He just took a couple of 100 mph fastballs and knocks the next one out. Come on. I mean, how crazy is that? And then did you see him run around the bases? He was still calm.”
The story Lindor has written in the past three weeks already is epic. He suffered such terrible back spasms down the stretch of a heated pennant race that he could not play for nine games. In the 11 games since he came back, he has reached base 21 times. Meanwhile, just to get on the field, he must go through a 40-minute therapeutic routine to stabilize his back so he can play. It includes massage, hot tub, electric stimulation, stretching and movements on a reformer.
“I told him, ‘And it only gets harder every year,’” teammate J.D Martinez said. “I said, ‘Every year it takes another 10 minutes.’”
It was epic enough that Lindor played, throwing his body around with his usual diving plays, headfirst slides and stolen bases, and igniting just about every huge rally for the Mets the way Derek Jeter did for the 1996 Yankees. It’s also that he thrived in the biggest moments.
The Mets have won three clinching games in their past nine games. Lindor is on the marquee of all of them:
- Game 161 (clinching wild card spot): Down 7–6 in the ninth, he wins the game with a two-run homer off Raisel Iglesias, the Braves’ all-star closer.
- Wild Card clincher: Down 2–0 in the ninth, Lindor starts the winning rally with a walk off Devin Williams, the Brewers’ all-star closer.
- Division Series clincher: Down 1–0 in the sixth, Lindor wins the game with a grand slam off Estevez, the Phillies’ all-star closer.
Three clinchers. Three huge at-bats against three all-star closers that helped turn three losses into three victories. Three season-changing moments in nine days. The latest one goes right up there with some of the greatest home runs in Mets history, including those from Donn Clendenon, Lenny Dykstra, Ray Knight, Mike Piazza, Pete Alonso and, okay, Lindor from just a week earlier.
“It’s been going about like this for the last five months now,” Stearns said. “It seems like every big moment, he just rises above it. And there's another level to his game whenever he needs it. And everyone in the ballpark expected something good to happen when he was up there.
“And then for him to do it is … it is unbelievable.”
Lindor was near tears on the field immediately after the final out as he hugged teammates, manager Carlos Mendoza and Cohen. In a moment when he was alone from the crush of people around the infield, he turned to the fans and touched his heart to let them know that he loved them. He raised his arms and punched the air. And then this calmness overcame him, the same calmness he had shown rounding the bases while all those around him were losing it. He remained this way through some interviews on the field.
As he made his way to the dugout and toward the clubhouse, I asked him what he felt underneath this calm exterior.
“Inside,” he said, “I am going nuts. Crazy. It’s hard to describe all the emotions I feel. But I can’t show it because I have no energy left.”
It is baseball at its epic best. The best players in the best moments writing history. And maybe Vientos was on to something when he saw something romantic in this baseball moment. Afterall, the word “romance” dates back 700 or so years to adventurous stories written in the vernacular (rather than Latin) about remarkable deeds, brave knights, heroic actions and such. There are more adventures to be written. The Mets, 11 games under .500 in late May, are following Lindor into the NLCS. Isn’t that romantic?
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Francisco Lindor Continues to Be the Hero the Mets Need.
