Behind the Lindor Effect, Mets Ride Chaos to NLCS Game 2 Win

Just as he has done all year, the All-Star shortshop was the catalyst New York needed to even the series with the Dodgers.

Lindor's leadoff home run broke the Dodgers' streak of 33 straight scoreless innings. / Jayne Kamin-Oncea-Imagn Images

Edward Lorenz, an MIT meteorology professor, would have loved Francisco Lindor and the New York Mets. Lorenz, who died in 2008, was the father of chaos theory, the official mathematical field of postseason baseball. He grasped in the 1960s how small changes in modeling could produce vastly different results.

What Newton was to the apple, Lorenz was to the butterfly. After first positing how the flap of a seagull’s wings could influence a large weather event such as a tornado (not literally, but as an allegory of the fallibility of weather forecasting), a decade or so later the seagull in his analogy became the more poetic butterfly. It was genius marketing as much as genius math. The Butterfly Effect was born. 

Today, especially after NLCS Game 2 on Monday at Dodger Stadium, we have The Lindor Effect. 

If the Mets are creating chaos, there’s a good chance it begins with Lindor. With his bat, glove, legs and spoken word, Lindor is the butterfly that spawns the tornado that is the New York Mets at their best. So important is Lindor to the Mets that it’s been 36 days since they won a game without Lindor scoring or driving in a run.

“I’ve learned to look at baseball in a whole new way because of him,” said New York third baseman Mark Vientos. “His observational skills are something I learn from all the time. He’s opened my eyes to a whole different side of the game.

“The other thing he does so well is slow the game down. These games are intense. But you watch how he goes about it and he’s just so calm. It’s amazing how calm he is.”

The Mets evened the NLCS at a game apiece with a 7–3 win that was aided unwittingly by curious Dodger game management. But to understand why it’s now a series, you start with Lindor and the flapping of his bat. In the first plate appearance after the franchise’s worst defeat in its 100 postseason games, Lindor capped an epic nine-pitch battle with a leadoff home run. It put some breath back in the Mets’ lungs.

One inning later, the Dodgers wanted no part of Lindor. Dodgers manager Dave Roberts ordered him intentionally walked—in the second inning—to load the bases with two outs to pitch to Vientos.

“For sure, I took it personal,” Vientos said.

Only once before in postseason history did a manager order an intentional walk to the leadoff hitter so early in a game. That hitter was also Lindor. Yankees manager Joe Girardi put him on base against CC Sabathia to get to Jason Kipnis in Game 2 of the 2017 ALDS. Kipnis delivered a run-scoring single.

Managers don’t like to walk people early and they don’t like to walk people with the middle of the order due. Lindor created that kind of threat.

This gambit with Lindor didn’t work, either. Vientos promptly crushed a grand slam. Eleven batters in, the Mets were virtually home free at 6–0.

Vientos's second-inning grand slam gave the Mets a 6–0 lead. / Jayne Kamin-Oncea-Imagn Images

“But I feel like it's just the praise for Francisco,” Vientos said. “You've got Francisco ahead of me, and he hit a home run earlier in the game. So, they would rather take a chance on me than him. But I use it as motivation. I'm like, ‘All right, you want me up? I'm going to show you.’ Whatever.”

In scientific terms, Lorenz discovered “sensitive dependence on initial conditions.” In baseball, it means that the little things win games. As the great baseball philosopher Joe Torre put it, in a line Phillies manager Rob Thomson borrowed to keep his hitters from chasing against the Mets in the NLDS: “Do the little things, and big things happen.”

Over and over, Lindor is that sort of change agent. It was Lindor who:

• Moved into the leadoff spot May 18. (The Mets are 75–52 since).
• Called the players-only meeting May 30 when they hit rock bottom. (They are the best team in baseball since.)
• Hit the ninth-inning home run off Braves closer Raisel Iglesias to clinch a playoff spot.
• Drew the ninth-inning walk off Brewers closer Devin Williams that led to the Wild Card Series-clinching home run by Pete Alonso.
• Hit the sixth-inning grand slam off Phillies closer Carlos Estévez to clinch the Division Series.
• Hit the leadoff homer and drew the second-inning intentional walk that sent the Mets on their way to the NLCS Game 2 win.

What you won’t find in the box score is how Lindor is constantly whispering in his teammates’ ears about what he sees on the field that they don’t. He is the Hitting Whisperer. When TV cameras caught him doing just that with Vientos just before Vientos smashed a hit off Philadelphia lefthander Cristopher Sánchez in the NLDS, conspiracy theorists immediately jumped to a pitch-tipping operation. The Mets have his changeup! Uh, no.

“No, we didn’t have anything,” Lindor explained. “I wish we did. All I was telling him was to stick to the plan we talked about before the game. Sometimes we go in with a plan and then we have to adjust based on what we see.”

Lindor’s private sessions with his teammates are almost always based on what he sees in the batter’s box about pitch shapes and tendencies. Since he moved into the leadoff spot, Lindor is more patient. He loves making a pitcher rifle through his repertoire of pitches trying to get him out so that he can report back to his teammates with battlefield intelligence.

“We all have the numbers and the scouting reports,” Lindor said. “They help you prepare. But there’s nothing like seeing the pitcher from the batter’s box. So, a lot of times I come back and tell guys. ‘His fastball is cutting’ or ‘his fastball is flat’ or ‘it’s got good ride.’ These are things you only know from seeing in the batter’s box.”

Game 2 was always going to be an uphill battle for the Dodgers, who sold out for a bullpen game against Mets lefthander Sean Manaea, who has been ace-like for the past four months. But the way Roberts managed the game swung the advantage even more to New York’s favor. He tried to win a postseason game without using Evan Phillips, Michael Kopech and Blake Treinen—his three best relievers. A fourth member of his Circle of Trust, Daniel Hudson, the only one who pitched in Game 1, was unavailable because of an unknown physical condition. In Game 2, Roberts played the long game.

“I think as far as kind of where we're at, it never feels good losing,” Roberts said when asked about holding back relievers. “But to feel you've got your leverage guys ready to go for the next three games, I feel really good about that.”

The Dodgers—the $351 million payroll Dodgers—tried to win a playoff game with this relay of relievers: opener Ryan Brasier, 37, making his seventh career start; to Landon Knack, a 27-year-old rookie already with a 38% jump in innings; to Anthony Banda, a 31-year-old journeyman who has found a home with his 12th organization; to Brent Honeywell, 29, who has pitched for six organizations in the past four years and wasn’t on the NLDS roster; to Edgardo Henriquez, a 22-year-old with 3 1/3 innings of MLB experience and a walk rate in the minors of 5.8 per nine innings. It was too much to ask, especially from the gassed Knack, who gave up a five spot, including four runs on the homer by Vientos. The five pitchers slogged through 184 pitches and seven walks.

Oddest of all was how the Dodgers punted the end of the game. After L.A. climbed back to within 6–3, Roberts stuck with Henriquez to start the ninth rather than use one of his leverage guys. No one was warming in the bullpen. No one got up even when Pete Alonso drew a one-out walk.

Now think about this juncture of this game. It is a playoff game still in doubt. The Mets have their closer in the game, Edwin Díaz, who is asked to get four outs and has been very shaky (so shaky that the Mets would get a reliever hot behind him two batters into the bottom of the ninth). The top of the Dodgers lineup—All-Stars Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts, Teoscar Hernández and Freddie Freeman—were one spot away in the bottom of the inning.

And you’re leaving a kid with 3 1/3 major league innings on the mound to keep it at 6–3 with no one warming up? Worse, your pitcher and defense are so far back on their heels that Alonso, the Polar Bear who runs like one, tiptoes into second base with an uncontested stolen base? 

Giving up that base so carelessly mattered. The three high-leverage relievers never moved in the bullpen as Starling Marte rapped a single to drive in the Polar Bear and make it 7–3 with a gift-wrapped run.

One Met said the team “couldn’t believe it” that the Dodgers did not use a high leverage reliever to give the offense a chance to come back. “With a day off on the other side? Are they all that gassed? It turned out to be big.”

It was so big Roberts opted not to use Gavin Lux, a left-handed hitter nursing a sore hip, against the righthanded Díaz to start the ninth instead of Andy Pages, a right-handed hitter.

“Once they scored the extra run in the top half of the ninth, I just felt that I'm not going to risk putting Gavin in a little bit more harm's way,” Roberts said. “And so I thought Pages was the best option in that moment.”

It was so big that Díaz started pumping fastballs over the middle of the plate.

“Yeah, I have more room to miss,” Díaz explained about the value of the last run. “If I miss a pitch right in the middle, I've got a lot of room to tighten it up again.”

It was so big that when Pages and Ohtani reached base, Betts, Hernández and Freeman, all of whom should have represented the tying run in the box, could not tie the game. Diaz retired all of them.

Roberts's decision to not use high-leverage relievers in Game 2 received plenty of criticism. / Jayne Kamin-Oncea-Imagn Images

Rare is the playoff game you see a team get away without using even one of its best relievers, but that’s what the Dodgers did. Maybe they do feel locked and loaded with their Circle of Trust for the three upcoming games in New York, but that also signals a lack of confidence that starters Walker Buehler or Yoshinobu Yamamoto are going to provide any length.

The edge the Mets have in this series is innings from starting pitchers. Luis Severino and Jose Quintana follow Manaea, who threw five solid innings before he admitted he “hit a wall.”

Manaea could be excused for the depleted energy. His aunt, Mabeline Glasshagel, was being buried Monday back in Wanatah, Indiana. She had passed the day of his NLDS Game 3 victory against Philadelphia. Most of his family was there at the funeral.

Just as he did at Citi Field after his NLDS start, when Manaea left the mound at Dodger Stadium he blew a kiss to the sky in honor of his Aunt Mabel.

“I feel pretty good about how I got through it,” Manaea said. “With so much going on it’s been emotional. All I can think about it is how these things are happening for a reason, and I am just riding it.”

Now the series shifts to the Citi Field portion of chaos. If the games swing the Dodgers’ way it will be due to Roberts leveraging his bullpen options, not staying away from them. And if they swing the Mets’ way, you won’t have to be an MIT professor to understand the science behind it. It will be The Lindor Effect.