DENVER -- It was just before gametime Friday that Francisco Lindor completed his cage work at Coors Field, feeling confident he could contribute later that evening. He told his manager as much. Despite breaking his right pinky toe just two days prior, Lindor intended to play.
“I knew I had a bullet there at some point,” Carlos Mendoza said.
Mendoza also knew he needed to be calculated about when he deployed it. Lindor was not yet able to run. He couldn’t play shortstop. But he could stand on two legs, which meant he could hit. And that made Lindor a threat.
Over the past year-plus, Lindor has consistently proven two things. One is that he will attempt to play no matter what might be ailing him. Two is that his ailments tend not to affect him that much.
So it was Friday, when Lindor stepped to the plate as a pinch-hitter in the ninth inning of a tie game, ignoring his broken toe long enough to hit a go-ahead, two-run double in a 4-2 Mets win over the Rockies.
“Knowing him, it’s like, ‘Of course he’s going to do that. Of course. Of course,’” first baseman Pete Alonso said. “But when you really take a step back, that’s really special having a teammate willing to put his body on the line every single day like that. It’s a true pro.”
“You just kind of expect him to get the job done,” added reliever Ryne Stanek. “He’s shown that’s what he’s capable of doing.”
Without Lindor, the Mets are a lesser team. So the concern was obvious when Tony Gonsolin struck Lindor on the right foot with a slider Wednesday in Los Angeles, causing the fracture. Lindor was out of the lineup the next day, when the Mets took a difficult loss against the Dodgers. He remained out for the first eight innings of Friday’s series opener in Denver, where the Mets went 1-for-13 with runners in scoring position.
The lone hit was at least a go-ahead, two-run double from Alonso in the seventh, giving the Mets a chance. Although the Rockies tied things in the bottom of that inning, Stanek escaped a bases-loaded, no-outs jam in the eighth thanks in large part to a diving Brett Baty double play.
All the while, Lindor stood in the dugout clutching a bat.
“I just wanted to play,” he said.
With one out in the top of the ninth, Juan Soto singled and Alonso walked. Lindor continued to stir. When Jeff McNeil flied out for the second out of the inning, Mendoza finally turned to his hobbled shortstop, giving the Mets hope and the Rockies anxiety.
“Francisco Lindor is one of the great players in the game,” Colorado manager Warren Schaeffer said. “He’s a guy you never count out. He’s just one of the best. You never want to see him in the batter’s box.”
It took Lindor only two pitches to prove those words prophetic, pulling his double deep enough into the corner for Alonso to slide in with a second run.
“We are spoiled,” Alonso said. “Because with him, you get a guy who’s just willing to strap it on regardless of how he feels or regardless of how his health is. I’ve seen him do stuff like this all the time. I know it’s hard to do, because battling through physical stuff, there’s limitations with everything. I just have nothing but the most amount of respect.”
Afterward, Mets players showered Lindor with similar compliments using all sorts of adjectives to describe their de facto captain. Friday’s starting pitcher, Kodai Senga, said through an interpreter that “it just kind of illustrates what kind of person Francisco Lindor is. He’s a leader, and he’s a superstar.”
Much of that reputation stems from the fact that Lindor does not like to miss games. Over the past three seasons, he has averaged 158 per year.
That’s not because Lindor has avoided injury. In May of 2024, he sat out the first five innings of a game with a serious illness, only to enter in the sixth and hit a pair of two-run doubles in an extra-inning win. Last September, Lindor missed 11 days due to lower-back pain that threatened his ability to contribute in October. He returned for three of the team’s final four regular-season games, hitting two home runs before going on to play every inning of every playoff game.
Now, Lindor has another achievement to add to the list.
“That’s the example that he sets,” Baty said. “I don’t want to throw any offense to the Rockies, but it’s the middle of June and we’re playing the Rockies. He wanted to play yesterday. And he wants to play today. I don’t know, that was so huge for him to come off the bench and have the game-winning RBIs.”
Many players, Baty was told in response, would hesitate to play under such circumstances.
“Not him,” the third baseman replied. “That’s why I have so much respect for him.”