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PORT ST. LUCIE — Francisco Lindor smiled and repeated himself.
“I just gotta play well in April,” Lindor said this week. “I gotta play well in April. That’s it.”
The Mets shortstop is coming off a wondrous season that ended with him finishing second in NL MVP voting — and yet he was not an All-Star.
Somehow, Lindor has never gone to the Midsummer Classic in his four years with the Mets, and last year part of the issue was his slow start.
He hit just .197 with a .639 OPS in March and April (including a 1-for-31 beginning to his season), which meant his year-end numbers were far better than his first-half stats.
Lindor arrived in camp not necessarily with the goal of starting quickly but of building up slowly. After a lower-back injury that cropped up in Game 147 last season — at a point he had appeared in all 147 games — Lindor hoped to be incremental in preparing his body this spring for a long season.
“I came in to spring training thinking about not being ready to go from Day 1 [of spring training],” Lindor said. “I’m pacing myself.”
He has played in five Grapefruit League games but not yet back-to-back — a step he reached March 2 last year.
Slightly lengthening the ramp toward playing every day is the lone slight preparation change for Lindor this year. For his career, he has been a relatively slow starter — his .753 OPS in March and April is his worst split of the season — but he generally begins campaigns far better than he did last year.
With health and a quicker start, one of the peculiarities of Lindor’s tenure in Queens would be fixed.
“Hopefully,” Lindor said about finally cracking what would be his fifth All-Star Game. “We’ll see.”
