WASHINGTON — Francisco Lindor started the season-opening series by asking all the right questions and finished it by making a statement.
It still wasn’t enough to keep the Mets from blowing an eighth-inning lead Sunday and losing 4-2 to the Nationals, but Lindor’s comfort-building fast start might be more important over the long run than a four-game sweep would have been.
The four-time All-Star shortstop hit his first home run and stole his first base Sunday, and emerged from the series hitting .250 with four walks, three runs scored, two RBIs and a 1.054 OPS. There was much more to the weekend than the scary scene of Lindor taking a fastball off the chin and narrowly avoiding a serious injury as benches cleared in the second game.
“Not many people would’ve played the next two days after what happened,” manager Buck Showalter said. “Sometimes people miss — not just Francisco but players in general — the type of moxie you have to have to continue to play this game when you can be in harm’s way very quickly.”
A year ago, Lindor was hitting under .200 with a .595 OPS on June 1 — almost 50 games into his Mets’ debut. But Lindor impressed Showalter from this Opening Day, when he went 1-for-5 with an RBI single.
“Lindor asks so many good questions in the dugout,” Showalter said that night. “He can stump the manager easily. You’ve got to be careful.”
Not Lindor’s intention. He was peppering Showalter with different scenarios that might pop up in a game: For example, where to be positioned and where to go with the ball if the Nationals had runners on the corners and superstar Juan Soto at-bat behind in the count.
“I just try to run different scenarios through to see what his answer is, and to see if his answer matches my answer,” Lindor said. “Early in the year, third inning, do we want to give up a run or not give up a run? How aggressive do we want to be? That should tell me how aggressive we are going to be later in the year. [Showalter] has been in the game longer than me, he’s smarter than me. Why not learn from him?”
The Mets’ aggressiveness backfired a couple times during the Nationals’ three-run eighth-inning rally. Lindor had to come off the second-base bag to stretch for a wide throw by Pete Alonso, so the Mets got no outs on what could’ve been an inning-ending double play to keep the score tied — or at least a second-out grounder if Alonso had just touched first base to play it safe.
Lindor said he often peppered former Indians manager Terry Francona — a baseball-lifer like Showalter — with similar questions when they were together. All in the name of becoming a better student of the game.
“I don’t want to be caught off guard because I wasn’t prepared or didn’t have the answers,” he said. “If I get caught off guard, it’s OK if it’s something new. If I knew the answer, I don’t want to get caught off guard.”