Francisco Lindor on busting slump: 'I'm working extremely hard'

Francisco Lindor has cracked the code — not about his poor performance, but about persistent boos from the home crowd.

"I think they’re booing because of the results," Lindor said, calling getting booed a "lonely feeling." "I don’t think it’s that they don’t like me. I think it’s because of the results, because when I come down to the dugout and I have a baseball in my hands, they all go crazy. It’s the same person that’s booing me. I’m starting to understand this.

"It’s a game. At the end of the day when I go home, I have a beautiful fiancee and a beautiful daughter that gives me full energy and impacts my life so much that the things that happen on the field, they stay at the field."

Those comments came Saturday, during the latest in a series of several-times-monthly pregame video news conferences to which Lindor acquiesces.

This time, he offered many of the same sentiments: Baseball is hard and humbling, getting booed stinks, nobody wants Lindor to succeed more than Lindor. And he is working hard, by the way.

But the primary caveat of weeks past — that it is still early — is less and less true. Happy Memorial Day weekend, everyone. Lindor entered the Mets’ game Saturday against Atlanta batting .185 with a .290 OBP and .268 slugging percentage. In the previous week, Lindor was 2-for-20 with zero extra-base hits.

Is Lindor completely healthy?

"Yeah. Thank God," he said. "Thank the good lord every single day because I have health. I feel good. Sometimes I wonder if my eyes are that bad because I’m not hitting the ball, but I think I’m good, man. I know I’m good."

And so the search for answers continues.

"I feel like my season has been extremely inconsistent when it comes to the offensive side of the game," Lindor said.

That isn’t true, though. At least not results-wise. Lindor has been consistent — just not in the way he or the Mets want.

Consider his average in 10-game segments through the first quarter of the season: .212 in the first 10 games, .171 in the next 10, then .229, then .154.

And the same for slugging percentage: .242, .244, .343, .282.

Even Lindor’s peaks have been valleys.

"I’m working as hard as I can, I’m doing everything I can," he said. "There’s not a day that I come to the field and say, ‘I want to strike out today three times or four times’ or ‘I just don’t want to get a hit.’ I’m working. I’m working extremely hard and I can’t wait to have results.

"You got to understand that with ups, there come downs, and with downs there come ups. It is what it is, man. I would love to be in a really high note right now for a very, very long time, but that’s not the case."

That leaves Lindor savoring fleeting moments of good feelings.

He had one on April 21, when he hit his first home run with the Mets, saying afterward that it was the one swing he needed to lock into a hot streak. It didn’t happen.

He had another Thursday, in his second at-bat in the second game of a doubleheader against the Rockies. He struck out swinging at Antonio Senzatela’s slider over the plate.

"I felt amazing," Lindor said. "And that was one of the most frustrating at-bats I had because I ended up striking out. But I felt amazing. I walked back to the dugout, I sat down, I’m like, ‘Wow, I felt really good but dammit, I struck out!’ It was one of those moments. But I feel like I’m in a good spot in a sense of my body’s getting there."