After a quiet Game 1 of the NL wild-card series, Francisco Lindor came back with a roar in Game 2 on Saturday night to help extend the Mets’ season.
The star shortstop gave the Mets an immediate lift with a first-inning home run before he started a key seventh-inning rally on the way to a 7-3 win over the Padres at Citi Field.
A night after the Mets were playing from behind almost immediately, Lindor turned the tables in Game 2. He crushed a fastball down the middle from San Diego lefty Blake Snell 403 feet into the left-field seats to put the Mets up 1-0 in the opening frame.
“It woke us up in that moment,” Eduardo Escobar said through an interpreter.
Lindor, who went 0-for-3 in Game 1, later led off the seventh inning with a single that sparked a four-run rally and gave the Mets much-needed breathing room.
“We’ve been trying to play like ourselves,” Lindor said. “It’s baseball. We have good days, we have bad days. We try to eliminate as many bad days as possible and try to have more good days. Today we played very Mets-like. We put the ball in play, we run the bases right, we play good defense, we pitch. We stay together, and we win together.”
Entering Saturday, Lindor had lost the last nine playoff games he had been involved in (the first eight were with Cleveland), but his 2-for-4 night with a walk in Game 2 played a key role in snapping that streak and forcing a Game 3 on Sunday.
Lindor had a tough series in Atlanta last weekend with the NL East title on the line. He went 2-for-13 with five strikeouts and no extra-base hits as the Mets were swept in three games and lost their shot at having a bye into the NLDS.
But the $341 million man made sure this weekend was different. He came up big when the Mets needed their stars to rise to the occasion. It was reminiscent of Lindor’s strong regular season, when he hit .270 with a 125 OPS-plus — which is expected to draw down-ballot NL MVP award votes.
“You get the best of the best day in and day out [in the playoffs],” Lindor said. “That’s why the games are so much better because the focus goes to a different level. Nobody is complaining about how tired they are. Everybody is locked in, and it makes you feel all different.”