Francisco Lindor’s derailed season, and his post-prime future

The metrics suggest Lindor should bounce back offensively in 2027, but his defense was concerning in 2026

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Over the first few weeks of the off-season, I’ve routinely been asking myself, “How worried am I about Francisco Lindor?”

Believe me— I don’t want to be asking that question. I don’t want to worry about him, as I’d rather just look at 2026 as an injury-riddled blip of a season which was derailed before Valentine’s Day due to a hamate bone issue, coupled with a calf injury that cost him any chance of a Lindor-like season.

After all, we are talking about a generational player at his position and a likely future Hall of Famer in Lindor. He has learned how to be a better player, a better professional, and a better professional in New York through his own mistakes; he has provided some of the biggest moments in the last ten years and demonstrated an unwavering ability to carry this team on his shoulders during the times it has mattered the most.

Sure, the road has been bumpy at times. There was the thumbs-down thing in 2021, there was the spat with Jeff McNeil, and a reported spat with Juan Soto which has since been resolved. He has said things at times which might suggest he knew he needed to be better. But he has always turned those negatives into positives and, again, he has demonstrated an ability to grow from those moments to become one of the greatest players to ever put on a Mets uniform and unquestionably the best shortstop this franchise has ever had.

But there were things in 2026 that were hard to ignore with Lindor which has me wondering about him.

Now, we cannot completely dismiss the injuries. Yeah, they messed his season up, but remember, Lindor is now on the wrong side of 30 and even if we put aside the hamate bone injury and the absence of consistent offense which comes with it postoperatively, the calf injury which sidelined him for two months in 2026 was a soft tissue injury, and those tend to become more prevalent as players age.

And the greatest predictor of future injury is past injury.

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I am not remotely suggesting Lindor is injury-prone. He isn’t. In fact, he has played through broken bones and all sorts of things I am sure we don’t know about and still been a peak performer throughout his Mets tenure.

What I am saying is, however, that he’s entering his age-33 season in 2027 at a premium position and, for the first time in his career in 2026, outside of his rookie year in 2015 and the COVID-shortened season in 2020, he played fewer than 125 games. He also posted a 2.2 fWAR, which is the lowest mark of his career outside of 2020, a career-low .733 OPS, and a shockingly low .309 on-base percentage.

But his offense isn’t what has troubled me the most. After all, his exit velocity was still in the 88th percentile, and his hard-hit rate in the 91st percentile. His bat speed actually improved year-over-year from 2025 to 2026 as well.

He posted -4 defensive runs saved at shortstop and a .967 fielding percentage, both being the lowest marks of his career. He also showed diminished range at shortstop combined with reduced overall foot speed.

Now, the foot speed issue might be attributed to the calf injury. It could be attributed to aging. It could be a combination of the two. But, whatever we want to believe about the effects of the hamate bone, next to no spring training, and the impact of the calf injury, Lindor made mistakes at shortstop this year he almost never made, that which appeared to lack concentration and focus. I am talking about clanking routine ground balls, mental mistakes on the infield, things like that.

Those problems are what diminished his value in 2026 above everything else from my seat.

With players learning two new positions on the infield in 2026, the Mets needed at least one steady hand on their infield, and Lindor was supposed to be the one on the field that offered the least amount of concern, if any at all. But, it’s no secret that, between the injuries and the unexplainable lapses on the field, his defense just poured fuel on an out-of-control infield fire to the point that Bo Bichette— a minus defender historically who had never played third base before— was the Mets’ best infielder in 2026.

Now, to be clear, the Mets aren’t trading Lindor. He is going to be their opening-day shortstop if he’s healthy, and he is expected to have a normal off-season, normal ramp-up to Spring Training, and a normal Spring Training. That is unlike anything he experienced last winter. So, there’s nothing to even consider here short of the Mets finding a viable backup that isn’t Bichette, Brett Baty, or anyone who isn’t a plus defensive shortstop. That is probably not terribly difficult to find in the external markets, nor should it be particularly expensive for them.

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They simply need to ensure they have an insurance policy for Lindor, which they didn’t have after they traded Luisangel Acuña to the White Sox for Luis Robert Jr. last winter.

Even so, this past season should offer everyone some pause and serve as a reminder that Lindor isn’t getting any younger, and the Mets probably need to find a formula that can help keep him fresher and potentially healthier in the near term, while starting to think about a succession plan in their pipeline at shortstop for the suddenly not-so-distant future.

That could be where prospects such as Sammy Stafura, Mitch Voit, and Jefferson Rojas could come into play in the future, if one or more of them aren’t traded to solve other problems over the same span of time.