Lindor adds to MVP case with 30th HR in Mets win
-
Jorge Castillo, ESPN Staff Writer
NEW YORK — Francisco Lindor‘s propensity for the big moment, an unquantifiable yet undeniable plus for his 2024 NL MVP candidacy, surfaced twice in the Mets’ 7-2 over the Boston Red Sox on Tuesday.
First, there was the towering two-run home run in the third inning to open the scoring, which stood as the Mets’ only hit until the seventh inning. Later, with runners at first and second, there was the line drive over the left fielder’s head for a run-scoring double to ignite a four-run game-busting eighth inning.
“I want those moments,” Lindor said.
Each time Lindor was showered with MVP chants from the home crowd at Citi Field. Each time there was a sense of inevitability in the Mets’ dugout that he would come through.
“I think every time he’s at the plate,” Mets manager Carlos Mendoza said, “we feel good about our chances.”
Lindor’s home run off Red Sox right-hander Kutter Crawford on Tuesday gave him his fifth career 30 home run season, tying him for second all time with Ernie Banks for 30 home run seasons by a primary shortstop, according to ESPN Sports & Information research. Only Alex Rodríguez (seven) had more.
He also stole his 26th base Tuesday, leaving him four shy of his second straight 30/30 season. He is one of three players with multiple seasons of 30 home runs and 25 steals, joining Howard Johnson and Darryl Strawberry.
Lindor’s exploits Tuesday powered the Mets’ sixth straight win to remain a half-game behind the Atlanta Braves for the final NL wild-card spot. They are 11 games over .500 for the first time this season — a day after going 10 games over for the first time this season.
It’s a position that seemed unimaginable when Jorge Lopez threw his glove into the crowd as the team fell to 11 games under .500 before calling a players-only meeting on May 29.
Since then, the Mets are 53-31, good for the best record in baseball. It has been a remarkable turnaround filled with great vibes, an improved starting rotation and a deep lineup led Lindor, who has discarded a poor start to the season to become Shohei Ohtani‘s chief competition for NL MVP.
“It’s been an unbelievable season to watch,” Mets president of baseball operations David Stearns said before the game. “We’re getting to the point, I think, where we’re talking about perhaps the greatest individual position player season in the history of this franchise. I’ve been around some really special seasons. Been around some MVP seasons. This is right up there with anything I’ve seen on a day-to-day basis.”
Still, Ohtani remains the overwhelming favorite to win MVP as he is having an historic offensive campaign in his first season with the Los Angeles Dodgers. He leads the NL in home runs, slugging, OPS, OPS+, runs scored and total bases. He was already the first player in MLB history with 44 home runs and 46 stolen bases in a season entering Tuesday. At this point, it’s a matter of when, not if, he becomes the first player to ever post a 50/50 season.
This would be Ohtani’s third MVP, after winning the award in the AL twice with the Angels.
But Ohtani, rehabbing from elbow surgery, has been the Dodgers’ designated hitter all season and won’t pitch again until 2025. And therein lies the top argument in the case for the 30-year-old Lindor: He plays defense — at an elite level at a premium position, at that — and Ohtani hasn’t played it all.
Lindor’s contributions on both sides is why he holds the NL lead in fWAR over Ohtani (7.0 to 6.6 entering Tuesday). He is batting .273 with 30 home runs and an .843 OPS this season while playing all 139 of the Mets’ games at shortstop.
“I appreciate the love the fans are giving me and I just got to continue to put up a good show for them so they keep on getting louder and louder,” Lindor said after Tuesday’s 2-for-4 performance that sparked more MVP chants.
Lindor’s numbers are despite a horrendous start to the season that left him off the NL All-Star team. The results flipped when he was moved to the leadoff spot on May 18. Since then, he’s batting .307 with 23 home runs, 20 steals and a .937 OPS in 95 games.
Defensive metrics are far from exact, but Lindor’s 17 outs above average were second among major league shortstops behind Kansas City Royals star Bobby Witt Jr. Then there are his intangibles as a veteran universally regarded as a top-notch leader.
“I think that’s part of the entire package that he brings,” Stearns said. “And it’s easy to quantify what he does on the field and that’s really impressive. It’s much harder to quantify the impact he has both by what he says and also by how he acts. He works so hard. He takes so much pride in not only in his preparation, but also ensuring that his teammates prepare appropriately. And it’s the entire package that I think allows him to contribute so much to the organization.”
In the other dugout, Red Sox manager Alex Cora beamed talking about Lindor before Tuesday’s game. He recalled meeting Lindor in Puerto Rico as a minor league player when Lindor was a little leaguer. He knows the Lindor family, also from the city of Caguas, well.
Lindor’s reemergence as an MVP candidate in his fourth season in New York invokes pride, according to Cora.
“He’s just an impactful individual,” Cora said. “There’s a vibe about him that not too many guys have at the big-league level. From the walk-up song, [when] this place is going nuts, to his smile to the energy to the commitment to the structure to the discipline. This kid is on point with everything. Just to watch him play, it brings joy to us. We love watching him play.”
So, does he think Lindor is the NL MVP?
“I’m glad that I don’t have to vote,” Cora said. “But both of them [are] game changers. We saw Othani earlier in the season. There’s a lot of good players in the National League.
“Obviously, at the end of the day, playoff stuff is going to come into play. I don’t think that’s necessarily something that voters need to take into consideration because if you have a great season and you’re in the fight all the way to the end, hey, you did something great. But it’ll be interesting. But the kid is doing everything.”
-
Ryan S. Clark
Many of Mikko Rantanen’s greatest moments have come in a Colorado Avalanche sweater. It’s just that the most defining moment of his career came at their expense.
It wasn’t enough that the Dallas Stars were trailing by two goals. It was also the fact that Rantanen scored a hat trick in a string of four unanswered goals that saw his current team, the host Stars, eliminate his old team, the Avalanche, in a 4-2 win Saturday in Game 7 of the Western Conference quarterfinals at the American Airlines Center.
“Obviously, the feeling was incredible to win a series,” Rantanen said in his postgame media availability. “This series was not exactly what I expected. I expected a seven-game series, even before Game 1. The ups and downs in the series. … Belief was there with the group the whole time. Obviously, I was able to make a pay to get the first one and the crowd started to roll.”
The Stars, attempting to reach the conference finals a third straight time, will advance to the semifinal round in which they will await the winner of series featuring the St. Louis Blues and Winnipeg Jets. That encounter will be decided Sunday in Game 7 in Winnipeg.
Soon, the Stars’ collective focus will shift to another Central Division foe. But for now? The attention before, during, and after the game, was on Rantanen.
Part of what made the Avalanche-Stars series arguably the most intriguing first-round series in either conference was the fact it placed two 100-point teams that are in championship window against each other. But, it also came with several subplots with the notable being the team that traded quite a bit to land Rantanen — with the hope he could win them a Stanley Cup now — needed him to defeat the team that he won a championship with back in 2022.
With one assist through the first four games, there was a discussion about if the Stars could manage to win with a sputtering Rantanen on top of the fact they were already without two of their best players in defenseman Miro Heiskanen and forward Jason Robertson.
Rantanen responded with a three-point performance in Game 5, and a four-point performance in Game 6 only to then have a hand in each goal on Saturday. His first goal came on the power-play with 12:12 remaining in the third period when he found enough space to fire a wrist shot that beat MacKenzie Blackwood.
Then came the game-tying goal and the significance it carried. The Stars went on the power play went Avalanche forward Jack Drury was called for holding. Drury part of the trade package the Carolina Hurricanes used to get Rantanen in late January before they would trade him to the Stars.
Drury’s penalty opened the door for Rantanen to score a game-tying goal that might be one of, if not, his signature salvo. Rantanen skated into the Avalanche zone in a 1-on-3 before he split two players before going around the net for a wrap-around goal that went off the skate of Samuel Girard with 6:14 left.
Three minutes later, the Stars received another power-play opportunity that saw Rantanen along with another former Avalanche forward in Matt Duchene work together to find Wyatt Johnston for the game-winning goal.
In the final minute, the Avalanche pulled Blackwood in the attempt to grab a late goal and force over time. Instead? Stars goaltender Jake Oettinger withstood a barrage that officially ended when Stars forward Tyler Seguin got the puck out of the zone only for Rantanen to skate in on an open net for the hat trick with three seconds left.
“I couldn’t care less who scored for them, I really couldn’t,” Avalanche captain and left winger Gabriel Landeskog said when asked about what it was like to watch Rantanen score a hat trick. “Mikko is one of my best friends and I love him, but I couldn’t care if he scored or if somebody else scored.”
For eight full seasons, Rantanen was part of a homegrown movement that saw the Avalanche go from finishing with what was then the worst record in the salary cap era back in 2016-17 to become a perennial favorite to win the Stanley Cup, which did they did in 2023, while also becoming a model for the need to build through the draft.
Building through stars such as Cale Makar, Nathan MacKinnon, Landeskog and Rantanen allowed the Avalanche to become a success. As did the moves they made to get other key figures like Valeri Nichushkin and Devon Toews.
Like all teams in a championship window, the Avs were facing the prospect of possibly making a difficult decision. They had yet to agree to a new contract with Rantanen, who was a pending unrestricted free agent. Then, came the blockbuster trade that few throughout the league saw coming.
The Avalanche traded Rantanen in a three-team trade that saw them get Martin Necas and Drury along with two draft picks. Rantanen’s time with the Carolina Hurricanes was limited to just two goals and six points in 13 games.
Despite the fact the Hurricanes are also among that cadre of championship contenders, Rantanen struggled to find cohesion in Raleigh. Rather than run the risk of watching leave for nothing in free agency, the Hurricanes put out feelers to a few teams with the Stars being one of them.
A long-time admirer of Rantanen, the Stars packaged two first-round picks, three second-round picks and former prized prospect Logan Stankoven to get Rantanen. They then signed him to an eight-year contract worth $12 million annually.
“It’s two things: It’s where our team’s at, and it’s Mikko Rantanen,” Stars general manager Jim Nill told ESPN back in March.
Rantanen finished the regular season with five goals and 18 points in 20 games prior to the showdown with his former team.
Not only did Rantanen’s hat trick condemn his former team to their second first-round exit since winning the Stanley Cup, but it continued a theme of former Avalanche eliminating their previous employers.
The Avalanche and Stars faced each other in last season’s Western Conference semifinal that saw Duchene, a former Colorado first-round pick, score the game-winning goal.
A year later, it was another former Avalanche first-round pick who delivered the devastating blow.
“It seems pretty fitting,” Johnston said about Rantanen. “Obviously, we want to win for each other and I think that goes a little extra when it’s a guy like that who is such a big part of our team and was there for a long time and everyone knows the trade that went on. It’s so awesome. We’re so happy as a group for him.”
As if Rantanen scoring a hat trick in a four-goal comeback wasn’t enough, there’s also the fact that this is now the ninth consecutive Game 7 that Stars coach Peter DeBoer has won his career.
DeBoer’s nine wins in Game 7s broke a tie with Darryl Sutter for the most in NHL history. It was also DeBoer’s third game 7 wins with the Stars.
“I felt something was going to happen,” DeBoer said. “But I could not have predicted that.”
-
Sports3 years ago‘Storybook stuff’: Inside the night Bryce Harper sent the Phillies to the World Series
-
Sports1 year agoStory injured on diving stop, exits Red Sox game
-
Sports2 years agoGame 1 of WS least-watched in recorded history
-
Sports2 years agoMLB Rank 2023: Ranking baseball’s top 100 players
-
Sports4 years ago
Team Europe easily wins 4th straight Laver Cup
-
Environment2 years agoJapan and South Korea have a lot at stake in a free and open South China Sea
-
Environment2 years agoGame-changing Lectric XPedition launched as affordable electric cargo bike
-
Business3 years agoBank of England’s extraordinary response to government policy is almost unthinkable | Ed Conway