Francisco Lindor hit his 300th career home run on Sunday, Sept. 27 in the final game of the 2026 regular season, reaching the mark after being stuck on 299 for two weeks.
That's a milestone that the Mets needed right now. In fact, they need any bright spot they can find in this season.
The Mets missed the playoffs for the second year in a row in a season that failed to launch. Lindor's own numbers tell a lot of the story. He came into the game hitting .222 with 20 home runs, well off his usual pace, on a team that hasn't given him much to play for down the stretch.
But the milestone gives the Mets something to celebrate.
The first 138 home runs of Lindor's career came with Cleveland, whichdrafted the shortstop eighth overallin the 2011 draft and signed
him for $2.9 million. It didn't take long before that looked like a bargain.
He hit .313 with 12 homers in just 99 games as a rookie in 2015, finishing second in the AL Rookie of the Year voting, and by 2016 he was the shortstop carrying a young Cleveland team through the postseason, hitting .310 with 18 hits over 15 games on the way to a World Series.
With a start like that no wonder he picked up the nickname Mr. Smile.
It's been harder for Lindor, 32, to keep up that moniker in Queens.
He was traded to the Mets in January 2021, sending Amed Rosario, Andres Gimenez, Josh Wolf and Isaiah Greene back in return. Three months later the Mets signed him to a 10-year, $341 million extension that runs through 2031. He got off to a slow start that April, slow enough that his own fans booed him, a rough welcome for a guy who'd just signed the richest deal in franchise history.
Since then, he's gone 30-30 twice and in October 2024, he hit the grand slam that sent the Mets past the Phillies and into the NLCS, still one of the best nights that Citi Field has had in almost a decade.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Francisco Lindor hits 300th career home run to cap Mets' nightmare season
