Last week, my colleague Jay Jaffe noted that Mets shortstop Francisco Lindor had just entered the list of top 20 shortstops in JAWS, his system for assessing players’ Hall of Fame worthiness, which factors in a mix of career value (WAR) and peak value (WAR over their seven best seasons). That’s not the only notable thing about Lindor’s season, of course, as after a slow start to 2024, he has forced his way into the NL MVP conversation. With a .270/.339/.492 line, 135 wRC+, and 7.2 WAR, he may be having his best season in a career that has him looking increasingly Cooperstown-bound.
It seems almost absurd, but Lindor’s OPS didn’t take even the tiniest of peeks over .700 until June 5 — he’s been so hot that you’d think he was produced in Brookhaven’s Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider. With Shohei Ohtani fighting for the first ever 50-50 season, Lindor may now be the biggest obstacle to the former’s coronation. Given the relatively modest impact even the biggest baseball stars have in comparison to their peers in football or basketball, no individual can really carry a team, but Lindor is certainly trying his best: The Mets have the second-most wins in baseball since the start of June (54), with the offense going from 17th to sixth in seasonal wRC+ over the same timeframe.
NL Position Player WAR Leaders since June 1
In that stretch, Lindor has edged out the other NL hitters by nearly 2 WAR. One of the odder consequences of the shape of Lindor’s performance is that it may result in a Hall of Fame player having missed the All-Star Game in the best season of his career. Lindor hasn’t made an All-Star squad since 2019, despite ranking fifth in WAR among hitters since the start of 2020.
Ranking 20th at your position in JAWS is already a mighty impressive feat, but it’s even more impressive when you’re only 30 years old, meaning there’s a lot of time left to add heft to your career WAR, which makes up half of JAWS. With Lindor’s (relatively) disappointing 2021 Mets debut even farther back in the rear-view mirror, it seems like a good time to provide an update on his rest-of-career projections:
| Year | BA | OBP | SLG | AB | R | H | 2B | 3B | HR | RBI | BB | SO | SB | OPS+ | WAR |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | .263 | .334 | .461 | 601 | 98 | 158 | 34 | 2 | 27 | 94 | 55 | 126 | 23 | 119 | 6.6 |
| 2026 | .259 | .331 | .447 | 580 | 93 | 150 | 32 | 1 | 25 | 86 | 53 | 121 | 18 | 115 | 5.8 |
Even projecting a typical decline through his 30s, Lindor’s mean ZiPS forecast offers ample opportunity for him to put up gaudy career totals. The median ZiPS projection has Lindor finishing with 400 career homers, enough to rank him as one of the best power-hitting shortstops in baseball history.
| Player | From | To | HR | G | BA | OBP | SLG |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cal Ripken Jr. | 1981 | 1997 | 345 | 2297 | .278 | .347 | .455 |
Whether you look at players who primarily played shortstop or only consider performance while playing the position, Lindor features prominently. His 30 home runs this season give him 245 for his career, 10th all-time among shortstops. Finishing with 400 would put him fourth all-time. Looking only at home runs while playing shortstop, Lindor is sixth and is just over 100 homers behind Cal Ripken Jr. for the top spot. Lindor is currently projected to finish at the top of this generation in career JAWS among active major league players.
If Bobby Witt Jr. keeps his beast mode switched on, he’ll quickly rise up this list. Lindor would still make the Hall easily even if his career ended tomorrow, as the Sandy Koufax of shortstops. The Mets’ propensity for implosions makes watching them feel like an episode of The Office, but missing out on the peak of a possible future Hall of Famer would be a mistake.
