Lindor, Mendoza finalists for BBWAA hardware
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NEW YORK -- Coming off one of their most encouraging campaigns in recent memory, the Mets are unsurprisingly receiving plenty of love in postseason awards.
Francisco Lindor and Carlos Mendoza are finalists for the National League MVP and Manager of the Year Awards, the Baseball Writers¡¯ Association of America announced Monday. That means they were among the top three vote-getters for those honors.
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MLB Network will announce the winners of their four major awards next week (all shows at 6 p.m. ET):
Nov. 18: Rookies of the Year
Nov. 19: Managers of the Year
Nov. 20: Cy Youngs
Nov. 21: MVPs
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Both Lindor and Mendoza face significant competition in their bids to win. Before injuring his back in mid-September, Lindor briefly passed Shohei Ohtani in FanGraphs¡¯ version of WAR and seemed to have a reasonable chance to unseat him as MVP, largely because of his prowess at an important defensive position. Ohtani, meanwhile, did the entirety of his damage at DH.
But as Lindor sat out eight consecutive games, Ohtani added 22 hits, six home runs and eight stolen bases to his ledger, likely sealing his MVP coronation with a 6-for-6, three-homer, 10-RBI game on Sept. 19.
The third NL MVP finalist, Arizona¡¯s Ketel Marte, also missed significant time from late August into September to dim his candidacy.
Overall, the three finalists finished with these statistical totals:
Ohtani
.310/.390/.646
54 home runs, 59 stolen bases, 130 RBIs
9.2 bWAR, 9.1 fWAR
Lindor
.273/.344/.500
33 home runs, 29 stolen bases, 91 RBIs
6.9 bWAR, 7.8 fWAR
Marte
.292/.372/.560
36 home runs, seven stolen bases, 95 RBIs
6.8 bWAR, 6.3 fWAR
Ohtani has won two prior MVPs, albeit both in the American League and both as a two-way player. Lindor has never won one but does have five top 10 showings, finishing ninth in each of the past two years.
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As for Mendoza, the manager faces a similar problem as Lindor: He¡¯s an excellent candidate going against another really strong one. Most pundits consider Milwaukee¡¯s Pat Murphy the favorite after he took over a Brewers team that lost Corbin Burnes and Brandon Woodruff and led them to the NL Central crown anyway. Murphy¡¯s Brewers finished 93-69 despite a payroll about one-third the size of that of Mendoza¡¯s Mets.
Yet Mendoza garnered similarly high marks in his rookie managerial season, rallying a Mets team that lost its first five games and was 11 games under .500 in late May to an 89-73 record and an NL Wild Card spot.
It¡¯s important to note that, as in the MVP and all BBWAA awards, playoff performance does not factor into the voting. All ballots were submitted before the start of the postseason.
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Throughout the regular season, Mendoza received regular praise for his clubhouse feel and ability to make effective ¡°gut¡± decisions in games -- things impossible to quantify that were nonetheless clear to most everyone around the Mets. Players up and down the roster lauded Mendoza for his work.
¡°Everyone respects him a lot, how everything has been managed here,¡± closer Edwin D¨ªaz said last month. ¡°We didn¡¯t start the season the way everyone wanted to, but he stuck with us. He trusted us. He allowed us to keep playing, and now it¡¯s paying off. I think Mendy deserves a lot of credit for that.¡±
The third finalist, San Diego¡¯s Mike Shildt, took the NL West race down to the final week of the season before losing out to the Dodgers, finishing with a 93-69 record and settling for a Wild Card berth. Shildt previously won a Manager of the Year Award in 2019 with the Cardinals. Mendoza and Murphy, as rookie managers, have never won one.