This is a preview of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter, an e-mail newsletter about all things baseball, featuring analysis and opinion about the game on and off the field from the perspective of the informed outsider.
You can subscribe to the newsletter for one year for $79.95 using your PayPal account or major credit card.
--
New York Mets
We remember it differently now, but on June 6, 2005, Carlos Beltran was hitting .291/.348/.460 in his first season with the Mets after signing a seven-year, $119-million contract in the offseason. The team was 30-27 in an NL East that was separated, top to bottom, by 1 1/2 games. Beltran did not get off to a slow start in New York. Rather, he struggled as the season went on. He hit just .254/.321/.392 after June 6 for a Mets team that slowly drifted out of contention in June and was never a factor the rest of the way. Beltran would bounce back from that debut to have a top-five MVP finish the next season and be the best player on the Mets from 2006 until he was traded in 2011.
On June 6, 2021, Francisco Lindor was hitting .214/.304/.337 for a Mets team that was four games clear of the pack in the NL East. Lindor was in his first season in Queens, having been acquired from the -dians for four players, and then signed to a ten-year, $341-million extension in April. While he was off to a very slow start, the team was fine for it, which should have shielded Lindor from criticism but didn’t. Later that year, Lindor would earn criticism for making a thumbs-down gesture to the crowd at Citi Field. Lindor would bounce back on the field, hitting .242/.337/.469 after June 6, a top-40 player in baseball over that stretch by FanGraphs WAR. Since that ’21 season, Lindor has been one of the very best players in the game and is on his way to the Hall of Fame.
Over at MLB.com, Mike Petriello wrote about the baseball reasons to not worry about Juan Soto, who wakes up today hitting .229/.367/.430, leading the league in double plays and with a few too many instances of not running out batted balls when running could have made a difference. I’m here to say that if any fan base should recognize the pattern here, it’s Mets fans, who have been here before. Sometimes Hall of Fame players have a couple of bad months, and they pretty much always come back. Juan Soto is just fine, and like Beltran and Lindor before him, will be a great player, a Hall of Famer, for the Mets.
We remember it differently now, but on June 6, 2005, Carlos Beltran was hitting .291/.348/.460 in his first season with the Mets after signing a seven-year, $119-million contract in the offseason. The team was 30-27 in an NL East that was separated, top to bottom, by 1 1/2 games. Beltran did not get off to a slow start in New York. Rather, he struggled as the season went on. He hit just .254/.321/.392 after June 6 for a Mets team that slowly drifted out of contention in June and was never a factor the rest of the way. Beltran would bounce back from that debut to have a top-five MVP finish the next season and be the best player on the Mets from 2006 until he was traded in 2011.
On June 6, 2021, Francisco Lindor was hitting .214/.304/.337 for a Mets team that was four games clear of the pack in the NL East. Lindor was in his first season in Queens, having been acquired from the -dians for four players, and then signed to a ten-year, $341-million extension in April. While he was off to a very slow start, the team was fine for it, which should have shielded Lindor from criticism but didn’t. Later that year, Lindor would earn criticism for making a thumbs-down gesture to the crowd at Citi Field. Lindor would bounce back on the field, hitting .242/.337/.469 after June 6, a top-40 player in baseball over that stretch by FanGraphs WAR. Since that ’21 season, Lindor has been one of the very best players in the game and is on his way to the Hall of Fame.
Over at MLB.com, Mike Petriello wrote about the baseball reasons to not worry about Juan Soto, who wakes up today hitting .229/.367/.430, leading the league in double plays and with a few too many instances of not running out batted balls when running could have made a difference. I’m here to say that if any fan base should recognize the pattern here, it’s Mets fans, who have been here before. Sometimes Hall of Fame players have a couple of bad months, and they pretty much always come back. Juan Soto is just fine, and like Beltran and Lindor before him, will be a great player, a Hall of Famer, for the Mets.
