The Mets are all but eliminated from postseason contention after another loss in Boston, and with the reality setting in that October baseball won’t be in the cards, Francisco Lindor wants to shoulder the bulk of the blame.
“I felt like we had a really good team coming into this year,” Lindor said to reporters on the field before Wednesday’s game. “We have collapsed, and I haven’t performed, especially. I know if I would have played a little bit better, I know we could have won at least five to seven more games, which we would be fighting for first place right now.”
Instead, New York is buried in the NL East standings after holding onto first place for nearly three straight months earlier in the season. Lindor battled injury and a prolonged early-season slump, and even as he has started to come alive of late, he is still batting just .232 with a .732 OPS, barely above league average for a four-time All-Star who signed a record $341 million contract extension in the offseason.
Lindor, widely seen and praised as a leader in the Mets clubhouse in his first season with the team, will now have to keep the group motivated through the final 10 games of the season, when there won’t be much to play for, as the team is on the cusp of being mathematically eliminated.
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“It's frustrating,” Lindor said. “We still got a couple games left. We would love to be in the playoffs. How realistic am I? I really don't know, but I know we're not close. But we're not going to quit, we're going to continue to play the game as hard as we can to try to come up with some Ws and see what happens at the end of September.”
Barring a miracle, the end of September will mark the end of the season for the Mets, who will have to spend the winter waiting for redemption after a disastrous second half.
“It sucks we’re not in that position where we’re in first place,” Lindor said. “That sucks for sure.”
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