NY Mets: Francisco Lindor nearing .230 for first time since Opening Day

Surely, New York Mets shortstop Francisco Lindor had some point of the 2021 season where he leaped over the .230 mark and had a respectable batting average. There was no doubt in my mind this happened at one point. Maybe it was early on when a single hit could raise his average a few dozen points.

Nope.

Lindor heads into the final Friday home game of the season on September 17 with a .228 batting average on the year. Nearing the next decade mark, the last time he was over .230 was on Opening Day when he went 1 for 4.

The highs and lows of Francisco Lindor’s first Mets season

I know batting average is such an antiquated statistic that it wants to hand out Werther’s Originals whenever you come to visit. But it is the clearest indication of how often you can expect a player to get a hit. It’s not like RBI, the grumpy old man partner of the batting average. Batting average is a literal average of how many successful trips to the plate a player may have out of 1,000.

Lindor hasn’t had nearly as many successful ones this year. He has been counting crows and hangin’ around the .220s since mid-July. Not once, though, has he gotten hot enough to climb over the .230 mark.

After batting .182 in April and .204 in May, it became painfully obvious that Lindor might not have a good batting average by the season’s end. It would take an incredibly long and even hotter stretch for him to possibly put up the numbers he did in Cleveland.

While he did improve to .241 in June and managed to put together a .333 number in his 12 July games, Lindor had his coldest month of all in August. Although it was only 25 plate appearances, he hit just .160.

September has actually been the month that I think we all expected him to have. Through his first 67 opportunities, Lindor is hitting .273 with 6 home runs and 14 RBI. Average months like this and suddenly we have the MVP candidate everyone expect the Mets had picked up over the winter.

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If able to continue trending in this direction, a .230 batting average or better should be easily attainable. It has clicked with Lindor, finally, after months of frustration on his part and that of the fans. Could it be that all he needed to do was give the fans a pair of thumbs down after all? Whatever it took, Lindor needs to use this final month to prove to us and himself that everything is going to be all right.