Why did it take this long for Francisco Lindor to make the All-Star Game with the Mets?

New York Times

12 hours ago

On Tuesday night in Atlanta, Francisco Lindor will take the field, likely to a chorus of boos from rival fans, to represent the New York Mets at the All-Star Game. Since being acquired from Cleveland in January 2021, Lindor has been one of the very best players in baseball, and yet this is the first time he's made an All-Star team with the Mets.
Advertisement
'It's a real honor,' Lindor said, 'to be able to take the field in Atlanta as a Met. I'm looking forward to it. There's a lot of good people in this organization, and to be able to represent them, I'll do that with a lot of pride and utmost respect.'
Just look at the league leaders among position players in wins above replacement (according to FanGraphs) from 2021 through 2024, with their number of All-Star appearances:
That's 26 players. Seven of them have made the All-Star team all four years, nine have made it three times, seven have made it twice and two have only made it once. Only one player in the top 26, the one who places fourth over that stretch, did not make an All-Star team: Francisco Lindor.
(For what it's worth, players 27 through 30 on the list combined for zero All-Star appearances: Alex Bregman, Matt Chapman, Willy Adames and Lindor's teammate Brandon Nimmo.)
From the outside, Lindor's continued exclusion from the All-Star Game looks like an inexplicable injustice. But there are a few reasons why it's taken one of the sport's best players this long to be showcased in the Midsummer Classic in blue and orange. Let's explore.
By WAR, Lindor was the best shortstop in baseball from 2021 through 2024. But the second-best, Trea Turner, also spent those four years in the NL. So did the fourth-best, Dansby Swanson. And the third-best, Corey Seager, played one of those years in the senior circuit. (Seager made two All-Star teams in five chances with the Dodgers; he's three for four with the Rangers in the AL.)
Over those four years, Turner made three All-Star teams and Swanson two. That left little room (or, in 2022, no room) for Lindor to crack the club. He's not alone: It's why a very good player like Adames, who was valued enough to sign a contract worth more than $180 million, has never been an All-Star.
Advertisement
Fan voting decides who starts the All-Star Game, and this is the first year in his career that Lindor has ever been elected at shortstop. It's not just that he had never won it before (even dating back to his years in Cleveland), it's also that he had never really come particularly close while with the Mets.
Major League Baseball has used a two-phase voting system for the All-Star Game since Lindor joined New York, with the initial phase creating a pool of finalists (three in 2021, two in the years since) and the second phase picking one winner. Until this season, Lindor had only been a finalist once, in 2023, when Atlanta's Orlando Arcia beat him out. Even then, Arcia had more than 1 million more votes than Lindor in the initial phase, or almost three times as many ballots in his favor. It was not a surprise that Arcia won the second phase.
Last year, when Lindor ended up finishing second in MVP balloting at the end of the season, he was seventh in fan voting among National League shortstops in the summer. (Lindor was also seventh in 2021.)
Why did Lindor do so poorly in fan voting? Maybe it's because even large swaths of his own fan base didn't fully appreciate him until the second half of last season. Mainly, though, it's because …
Lindor's seasons with the Mets have generally followed the same track: sluggish starts buoyed by excellent performance from about the middle of May onward.
Fan voting begins in early June. Here's what Lindor's numbers have looked like on June 1 in each of his five seasons with the Mets:
Compare that to what he's done from June 1 on:
A similar dynamic has hurt Lindor's chances in balloting done by his peers, which happens by late June. Slow starts obviously alter the narrative around a player. (It's why Juan Soto, whose numbers made him look like a slam-dunk All-Star by the time the team was announced, didn't make it this year in the National League.) For All-Star purposes, it's much better to slump in June (as Lindor did this year) than in April.
Let's use June 20 as an additional cutoff point; by that time, most players probably have an idea of who they're putting on their ballot. Here's how Lindor has fared against the reserves selected for the All-Star Game in the last four years:
The most glaring snub there is C.J. Abrams making the club over Lindor in 2024, but that's because Abrams was a league selection to ensure the Nationals had a representative in the game. Last year, when he once again didn't make the team, Lindor quipped, 'I guess I've got to have a better April.'
That last chart reveals the way offense is rewarded more than defense at the All-Star Game. In late June of each season, Lindor had done less offensively than every player selected ahead of him. His usually terrific defense sometimes brought his WAR closer to the group, but it couldn't make up the gap entirely.
It's ironic, then, that Lindor made the team this year despite having his worst first half defensively while with the Mets. That's the power of having power.
(Top photo of Francisco Lindor: Jim McIsaac / Getty Images)