Mets' Buck Showalter: Francisco Lindor 'one of those special, well-rounded players'

The Mets got to Los Angeles Dodgers ace Clayton Kershaw early on Thursday afternoon at Citi Field, taking advantage of some rust shown by the three-time CY Young winner. After all, Kershaw hadn’t pitched since Aug. 4 due to a lower back injury.

But after surrendering three walks in the inning (which he hadn’t done since 2013) and walking in a run (which he hadn’t done since 2015), Kershaw returned to form, retiring 13 straight Mets to close out his afternoon.

As soon as Dave Roberts and the Dodgers turned things over to the bullpen, though, the Mets took advantage, scoring two runs in the sixth and another two in the seventh to come away with a 5-3 win.

And at the center of the action was Francisco Lindor.

Lindor delivered a clutch RBI double in the sixth inning off of reliever Chris Martin, scoring Starling Marte all the way from first base. Lindor then stole third and came in to score the go-ahead run on a Darin Ruf sac fly, and the Mets never looked back from there.

Couple all of that with an excellent defensive play to end the top of the fifth inning (in which Lindor ranged up the middle and made a perfect flip to second base), and it was an all-around terrific afternoon for the Mets shortstop.

“He just plays on both sides of the ball, really the three phases of the game,” Buck Showalter said afterwards. “He’s one of those special, well-rounded players that can beat you in so many ways.”

Lindor was asked afterwards what he was most proud of from his performance on Thursday, and as he’d done in the past, the former Platinum Glove winner looked to his defense and explained what went through his mind on his tremendous play up the middle.

“I like defense, and there was the one play that changed the game a little bit.

“When the ball was hit, I was going to go to first base, and then it took that weird hop to make me go towards my left, and that’s when I knew I had no chance at turning and throwing, so I just flipped it as hard as I could to second base.”

With Thursday’s win, the Mets took two of three from the Dodgers in this series and four of seven in the season series.

And while Lindor didn’t want to hype up the season series win too much, he admitted it’s big to beat the best team in baseball, record-wise.

“I mean it’s big because we won two games and they have the best record in the league,” Lindor said. “It’s a big series. We’re just happy we ended up taking the series.

“It means we played good baseball against them, that’s all it is. And hopefully we can make it to the postseason and if we face them in the postseason, hopefully we can do the same thing.”