Mr. Smile apparently wasn’t smiling an excessive amount of about certainly one of his teammates final season.
New York Mets shortstop Francisco Lindor had a “heated confrontation” with teammate Jeff McNeil final June, Mike Puma of the New York Put up reported on Friday. Puma writes that Lindor started verbally attacking McNeil on June 20 over a defensive lapse that McNeil had throughout that day’s recreation towards the Philadelphia Phillies. The confrontation, which was solely verbal and by no means bought bodily, got here within the midst of a seven-game dropping streak by the Mets on the time.
Puma additionally reviews that the flashy Lindor clashed personalities in the course of the yr with the business-like Juan Soto in the course of the season as nicely.
Curiously sufficient, the five-time All-Star Lindor additionally had a confrontation with McNeil within the dugout throughout a recreation within the 2021 MLB season. That confrontation did flip bodily, and Lindor later supplied a particularly unconvincing excuse for the incident.
In the meantime, the incident final June underscored the Mets’ struggles to get on the identical web page with each other in the course of the 2025 marketing campaign. Regardless of having a mammoth $342 million payroll, the Mets fully collapsed within the remaining weeks of the season and missed the playoffs altogether.
Now there are rumors that the Mets may make some massive adjustments this offseason, together with a possible commerce of McNeil. After one other obvious confrontation between the veteran utilityman and the four-time Silver Slugger Award winner Lindor, it’s clear that one thing will not be fairly working proper now in that clubhouse.
