February 4, 2021

New York Mets shortstop Francisco Lindor had a lot made of his relatively disappointing final year with the Cleveland Indians, a campaign in which he posted his worst wRC+ (102) and lowest OPS ever (.750). With a player as great as Lindor is, it's best not to put too much stock into down numbers from a weird and shortened season. That said, it's still worth examining where those numbers came from. Lindor, like many MLB hitters, thrives on fastballs. He had seen them on 58.7% of pitches during the height of his power pinnacle from 2017-19. In 2020, opposing pitchers offered him fastballs just 53% of the time, making up the difference, naturally, with breaking balls and off-speed stuff. Among the many things Lindor excels at, hitting breaking balls consistently is historically not one of them. Diving further into this trend, Lindor has developed a tendency to become aggressive early in counts. From 2016-18, he swung at the first pitch of a plate appearance just 21.6% of the time. Since the start of 2019, that number has jumped to 26.7%. Pitchers have used this against him of late, as he saw a significant uptick in first-pitch breaking balls from 2019 (25.2%) to 2020 (31.3%). He had a swing-and-miss rate of 43.8% on breaking balls in 0-0 counts in 2020. Considering most of the best pitchers in the AL Central the last few years were his own teammates, it's worth taking these trends into account as he heads to the pitching-stacked NL East. It would be an oversimplification to say that Lindor needs to lay off breaking balls or get better at hitting them, but perhaps reverting back to a more patient approach early in counts would serve him well and draw more first-pitch fastballs. In any case, he remains one of the league's top fantasy shortstops as he joins a deep Mets lineup that should provide him plenty of protection no matter where he hits in it.--Chris O'Reilly