I wish that Major League Baseball gave out its MVP awards in the same way that high school movies dramatize the crowning of a Prom Queen—all the students watching rapt as an adult with an on-stage microphone calls the protagonist's name. It'd be obvious how the NL MVP would go in any coming-of-age movie worth its salt: Shohei Ohtani humbly breaks off a piece of his tiara to give to Francisco Lindor, because he can't bring himself to soak up the entirety of the recognition for himself.
Lindor's all-around success at the plate and at shortstop this season had earned him an undisputed spot as the National League's second-most valuable player well before Wednesday. And if it wasn't already, his place in the hearts of Mets fans was cemented by the skin-saving sockdolager he levitated in the ninth inning in Atlanta to deliver New York a playoff berth on the day after the so-called last day of the season. But I don't know if anything he's done in his career so far can match his cathartic triumph near the end of one of the most excruciating innings in recent playoff memory—one that allowed the Mets to knock out the Phillies and earn a trip to the NLCS.
Through five innings of Game 4 action in Flushing, the Phillies led 1-0, but not for a lack of threats by New York. Philly starter Ranger Suarez extricated himself without a scratch from not one, but two bases-loaded jams in the first two innings, and he improbably maintained his shutout until manager Rob Thomson brought out the hook with two on and one out in the fifth. Jeff Hoffman escaped with the slim lead intact, but a long break in the dugout over a half-inning in which three different Mets took the mound appeared to short-circuit his arm. J.D. Martinez singled. Starling Marte took one for the team. Tyrone Taylor walked. Francisco Alvarez hit into a fielder's choice at home.
With Lindor at the plate, Thomson reached into his bullpen and inserted Carlos Estévez, who had thrown 26 pitches in a Game 3 eighth inning that had taken place less than 24 hours earlier. Estévez had also allowed a double to the very hitter he was about to face. It was the final misstep Thomson would make this season.
It took four blistering fastballs for Estévez to learn he was not destined to find the redemption he sought. On a 2-1 count, Lindor connected flush to send the ball on a trip to right-center that kept going, and going, until it landed beyond the fence and made the crowd start pogoing.
As all of Lindor's teammates mobbed him at second in the afterglow of Edwin Diaz's series-ending strikeout, I remembered a Phillies-Mets game I attended in the throes of 2021's Hot Vax Summer—a time of grand optimism for everybody but the new New Yorker Lindor. The Mets made use of a Jacob deGrom start to improve to 41-32 with a walk-off sacrifice fly. But in the game's penultimate at-bat, with the bases loaded and the score tied, Lindor struck out limply on an 86-mph pitch that sunk out of the zone. This was just a few months after he'd signed a 10-year, $341 million deal; he went 0-for-5 that day, and a lot of people booed him. I thought about all the nice things I'd heard about "Mr. Smile" when he was back in Cleveland—that, for example, he was the one guy who pointedly learned in advance the names of the young buddies paired with him on Kids Day, so he could be like Santa Claus or something when they first met on the field. Back there, he'd been a hero, someone who could hit a momentum-flipping grand slam against a hated enemy in the division series. It all felt very far away.
You might remember what came next. Lindor returned to form in 2022 as the Mets shocked everybody, first with 101 wins and then with an abrupt playoff exit. The team slid in 2023, but not because his production took any kind of dip. In 2024, he established himself as better than ever—if not in every sense of the word. Lindor, today, is dealing with a different kind of struggle: His back is screaming at him to stop playing baseball for a while. In the aftermath of an injury suffered about a month ago, Lindor had to miss a key stretch of regular-season action, and it's been all hands on deck for the medical staff to keep him in the lineup these playoffs. You could perhaps see the toll this has taken when he rounded the bases after hitting the grand slam—stone-cold stoicism in what should have been the most adrenalized moment of his life. But that might be one of the tools that allowed him to get to the plate in the first place.
I can't sincerely argue I'd rather witness nine innings of Lindor than four at-bats from Ohtani in a usual game, but nothing felt more "MVP" than Lindor's series-winning shot. On an evening where hitters kept coming up short, one superstar battling through pain took a swing nobody will forget—whose reverberations will be felt through next week and perhaps beyond. Besides, who needs another individual trophy when you're King of New York?
