Francisco Lindor came over to the Mets following the shorted 2020 season. However, the season prior in 2019, Lindor had a season batting average of .284, with 32 home runs, 74 RBI, 101 runs scored, 22 SB, and an OBP of .335. He average playing 155 games for four season in a row.
In his first year with Mets, Lindor, at 27 years of age, had a batting average of .230, 20 home runs, 63 RBI, 73 runs scored, 10 SB, and an OBP of .322. And he only played in 125 games.
A huge drop from his usual production.
Future Hall of Famer Carlos Beltran was coming off a year with the Kansas City Royals, and then an amazing playoff run with the Houston Astros where he had a season batting average of .267, 38 home runs, 104 RBI, 121 runs scored, 42 SB, and an OBP of .367.
In his first year with the Mets, Beltran at 28 years of age, had a season batting average of .266, 16 home runs, 78 RBI, 83 runs scored, 17 SB, and an OBP of 367.
Again, a huge drop from his prior production.
Future Hall of Famer Roberto Alomar was coming off a year with the then Cleveland Indians with a batting average of .336, 20 home runs, 100 RBI, 113 runs scored, 30 SB, and an OBP of .415.
In his first year with the Mets, Alomar, at 33 years of age, had a batting average of .266, 11 home runs, 53 RBI, 73 runs scored, 16 SB, and an OBP of .336.
Another huge drop from his prior long-time production.
Please note that while Alomar was beginning the descent of his career and only last one more season with the Mets, Lindor, and Beltran before him, would go on to have multiple impactful seasons for the Mets and that first year would turn out to be strictly an anomaly.
But it does seem like stars who come to the Mets seem to experience some kind of first-year jitters. George Foster had an awful first year with the Mets after being resigned to a big contract. Jason Bay…we all know what happened with him. Some players are able to right themselves, while others are not. Lindor and Beltran went on to have success with the Mets after the initial hiccup. Alomar was soon to be done and Bay was an absolute mess.
Bo Bichette is still young with a history of success in some pressure situations. He is able to walk away from this mess of a team, a disgrace of a front office, if he so wants to. I would if I were him. It’s not about the pressure of playing in New York. It’s playing to a game plan that just doesn’t work for the kind of player Bichette (and some others) just aren’t equipped to work with.
It’s unfair to be judged on your performance when your performance is based on someone else’s demands on how to execute. It’s like being blamed for failing a test when you gave the answers provided by someone else who insisted those were the correct answers.
Bichette isn’t the one failing this test. More likely, it’s David Stearns and his analytics department. Bichette may just be sitting in the wrong seat.
