Mets can breathe easier with losing streak snapped, but Francisco Lindor's injury adds new hurdle to overcome

If that represents symmetry for the 2026 Mets, this season might just be as doomed as it felt while the 12-game losing streak dragged on into historic territory.

In any case, this new reality seemed to weigh especially heavily on Carlos Mendoza. It’s clear he fears Lindor could be out at least as long as Soto, and perhaps longer, depending on what an MRI on Thursday reveals.

“We got relatively good news with Soto and it was still three weeks,” Mendoza said after the game. “It’s what we’re dealing with right now. We lost Soto and we had a hard time. We’re going to have to find a way.”

Mendoza said he knew it was bad as soon as he saw Lindor slow up going around third, as he scored from first on Francisco Alvarez’s double to right-center, injuring the calf along the way.

“Then I could see the look on his face, walking to the dugout,” Mendoza said. “Then he had to come out of the game.”

Lindor, of course, rather famously wants to play every day through anything, whether it’s a broken toe, a broken finger, or the birth of a child, none of which has kept him from his shortstop position.

The worst news for the Mets, of course, is that Lindor was finally starting to heat up at the plate after one of his notoriously cold starts to a season.

He had the three-run home run on Tuesday, two hits on Wednesday, and nine hits in his last seven games.

Even more to the point, there’s no getting around the fact that as Lindor goes, so go the Mets. It has been that way year after year: they win when he hits, they lose when he doesn’t.

He’s always had that impact, going back to his days in Cleveland. For his career, spanning 10 seasons for the Guardians and Mets, Lindor has put up a .950 OPS in games his team has won, as opposed to .638 in losses. In wins, he’s hit .316, in losses, .216.

Those numbers have been even more dramatic with the Mets. Last season, he had a .999 OPS in games the Mets won, compared to .610 in losses. In wins, he hit .333, in losses, .196.

And in 2024, the season in which Lindor carried the Mets to the postseason, making a run at the MVP Award, his OPS in wins was 1.084, compared to .543 in losses.

Mendoza knows all of that. He knows that even with Soto back, the Mets are going to feel the loss of Lindor at a time when they need to make a run to have any hope of getting back into contention in the coming weeks and months.

As it was, he could only smile wryly when asked after the game if he expected to come back with the same new-look lineup he used on Wednesday, with Bo Bichette leading off the Lindor in the clean-up spot.

“Well, we probably won’t have Lindor,” he said. “So I’m probably going to have to get creative.”

It’s been that kind of season for the Mets. The losing streak was over. And yet you knew the manager wasn’t going to sleep well. Again.