LOS ANGELES — Before Friday night at Dodger Stadium, Francisco Lindor hadn't recorded an extra-base hit from the left side of the bat. Lindor, a left-handed pitcher, didn't record many hits.
He has shown recent signs of recovering from his early-season slump, but almost all of that has happened as a right-handed hitter. Lindor, a switch hitter from the left side, entered the at-bat in the seventh inning and posted a batting average of .093.
So when Lindor finally took a game-changing swing, hitting a two-run home run over the right-field fence to tie the game at Chavez Ravine and give the Mets a 9-4 victory over the Dodgers, he forgave him a little. It's about the emotions you show. When he touched first base, Lindor slapped coach Antoan Richardson's hand, made a fist with his left hand and clenched it tightly. As he crossed home plate, Lindor wrapped Starling Marte and DJ Stewart in bear hugs.
“When I have teammates and people pushing me, when I get results like that, I tend to release my emotions more,” he said. “Normally I would just pat my chest a few times, thank the Lord, and carry on. But Marte was always by my side, stuck with me, and that was the first person I ever saw. . So, yeah, I hugged him. Then Pete. [Alonso]Stewart and everyone else were celebrating in the dugout, which was pretty cool.
“It definitely feels good to be able to have success in a moment when the team needs it.”
It was the Mets' fifth straight win. The home run was Lindor's fifth as a left-handed batter since last year's All-Star Game. He then added a single and his first stolen base.
Along the way, the Mets made a number of other moves on starting pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto, an offseason free agent target who turned down a nine-figure offer to go to Los Angeles with the Dodgers. Stewart hit a three-run homer off Yamamoto that night, while Harrison Bader tied a career-high with three of his four hits off Yamamoto.
But it was Lindor who delivered the most important hit of the night, shortly after the Dodgers took advantage of two errors by Joey Wendle to tie the game in the sixth inning. Lindor, a left-handed batter against right-handed relief pitcher Daniel Hudson, used his weight to send a hanging 3-2 slider into the Dodger Stadium bleachers.
“It's not easy to hit a switch hitter,” manager Carlos Mendoza said. “It's hard to hit in the big leagues, let alone be a switch hitter. Sometimes one feels better than the other, and that's the case right now. But from the left side lately. I like his at-bat.”
For Lindor, switch-hitting has always been part art and part science. When Lindor finds something that works from one side of the plate, he tries to mirror it. The shortstop's swing is not perfectly symmetrical, but it is a close enough swing to carry from one batter's box to the other.
“I try to be the same player on both sides,” Lindor said.
He's always been a good right-handed hitter, but that's not particularly unusual. Almost all switch hitters are strong in one aspect, usually an innate aspect. And historically, Lindor's split was never obvious. For example, in 2022, Lindor's OPS was just 5 points behind him on both sides of the plate. For the first eight years of his career, he posted an .826 OPS on the right side and an .811 OPS on the left side.
However, Lindor's splits last season were unusually skewed, especially in the second half. This trend became even more pronounced earlier this season, with almost all of his production being as a right-handed hitter against left-handed pitchers. They've lost Lindor so much that a reporter asked Mendoza earlier this week if the star shortstop would consider quitting the switch hitter altogether.
Mendoza laughed off the question, but two days later Lindor appeared to have unlocked something. In the bottom of the third inning against Yamamoto, he missed the barrel of his splitter by – by his own estimation – about a half-inch. In the fifth, Lindor hit a 292-foot fly ball into the glove of center fielder Andy Pages.
Finally, in the seventh, he found what he was looking for — and in that moment, Lindor didn't care whether it was right-handed, left-handed, or upside down.
“I was able to stand in the middle of the at-bat, walk up to the plate and swing straight down,” Lindor said with a laugh. “Even if you get through it, you’ll still have the same feelings.”
