ST. LOUIS -- Shortly after Masyn Winn’s walk-off single blooped into shallow right field on Wednesday afternoon, sticking the Mets with a 2-1, 11-inning defeat and a series loss to the ostensibly rebuilding Cardinals at Busch Stadium, shortstop Francisco Lindor stood in front of a gaggle of questioners to answer for his mistakes.
If Lindor was not the primary culprit of this defeat, he was certainly on the short list. In the first inning, Lindor forgot how many outs there were, costing Freddy Peralta a likely inning-ending double play. In the sixth, Lindor was picked off first base moments before Juan Soto plated New York’s only run with a solo homer.
“There’s no excuses,” manager Carlos Mendoza said, referring specifically to Lindor’s first-inning gaffe. “And he’ll be the first one that tells you that.”
It was the most poignant moment of a loss that left the Mets, one week into the season, facing some notable questions. Such as:
Is the offense actually this bad?
From the sixth inning Tuesday through the fifth inning Wednesday, the Mets sent 27 consecutive batters to the plate without recording a hit. During an overlapping stretch, they went 17 straight innings without scoring a run. The Mets crossed home just once over their final 22 innings in St. Louis, unable to score in extras despite the benefit of an automatic runner at second base.
That’s ... not great for a team that features Lindor, Soto and Bo Bichette at the top of its lineup. While Soto has done his part, homering in the sixth to provide New York’s only run and contributing a .952 OPS over the team’s first six games, no one else has proven consistent.
As a team, the Mets finished 0-for-11 with runners in scoring position on Wednesday. Overall this season, they are batting .162 in those situations, which ranks near the bottom of the Majors.
“With runners in scoring position, there’s a few things there -- ultra aggressive at times, expanding at times as well with some of the guys,” Mendoza said. “We’ve just got to get back to what we do well, which is controlling the strike zone, getting good pitches to hit and doing damage. [We have] good hitters that right now, for a couple of games, they’re not getting it done.”
Although the sample size remains miniscule, this is an area in which the Mets notably struggled in the first half of 2025 -- so much so that even after some late-season improvements, the club still replaced hitting coaches Jeremy Barnes and Eric Chavez with Jeff Albert and Troy Snitker.
Despite the new personnel, early returns in ‘26 have been much the same.
Is Lindor the guy to fix things?
Two years ago, this was unequivocally Lindor’s team, both inside the clubhouse and on the field. But the situation has changed since then, with Soto coming on board and outperforming Lindor last season. This spring, owner Steve Cohen squashed any talk of Lindor becoming team captain.
At age 32, Lindor is obviously still an elite player and an important clubhouse voice. But he has a history of starting slowly and appears to be doing so again this season. Through six games, Lindor is batting .143 with a .712 OPS.
While it’s impossible to tell if the hamate surgery Lindor underwent in February is underpinning any of this, it couldn’t have helped. It also can’t help that the players around Lindor -- with the exception of Soto -- have not exactly picked him up.
“I still believe in what we have,” Lindor said. “[President of baseball operations David] Stearns and the front office did a good job of putting a good team together, and we have a good team. It’s just that they executed their game plans. ... It happens. It’s baseball. At the end of the day, we’ve got to play better than the other team.”
Managers tend to say that while physical mistakes happen, mental mistakes are inexcusable. Mendoza had little problem with Lindor getting picked off first base before Soto’s homer, for example, because he was planning to steal second on that pitch. The Cardinals simply sniffed it out. Similarly, Mendoza expressed confidence in his offense, considering the track records of Mets hitters.
Where Mendoza drew the line was on Lindor forgetting how many outs there were. Even if a double play in that situation would not have springboarded the Mets to a better outcome, it was the type of mistake that no one in the clubhouse dared defend.
“Inexcusable,” Lindor said. “I just forgot the outs.”
Told that Mendoza defended him on the pickoff play, Lindor simply shrugged.
“I should have been better,” he said.