So in the interest of exploring all their options, they brought a 17-year-old shortstop from Florida’s Montverde Academy up to Safeco Field for a workout. This kid wasn’t considered a serious top-five pick, but various Mariners scouts had fallen in love with his glove, athleticism, and personality, and wanted to give him one last look in front of the club’s top brass.

He passed the test with flying colors, erasing any lingering doubts on the field and charming everyone he met off it. And the Mariners quickly became tempted to throw caution to the wind and draft him far higher than consensus would’ve deemed reasonable.

“He had so much fun,” says Tony Blengino, who was then a special assistant to Zduriencik. “There was not a nervous or tentative bone in his body. He was just all juice, all fun. … We took him out to lunch and ‘face of the franchise’ is all you could think of. This was the kind of kid who’d be in the big leagues when he’s 20, and if he hits for power—which was my only concern going in—then you’ve got a superstar on your hands.”

The shortstop had flown to Seattle on his own, so after the audition, two senior Mariners executives—McNamara and national cross-checker Mark Lummus—dropped by his hotel to check on him. “I thanked him for flying out by himself and wished him the best in the upcoming draft,” McNamara told me over email. “He gave me a hug and said, ‘I hope you guys take me.’”

They didn’t. With the no. 2 pick in the 2011 draft, Seattle chose Danny Hultzen, a left-handed pitcher from the University of Virginia. And six picks later, Cleveland took the kid: Francisco Lindor.

It is indisputable that Lindor is in a slump. The big concern for the Mets organization is that he’s been on this slide for three seasons now, which bodes poorly for their long-term investment.

Strikeouts aren’t to blame for the slide. His 16-percent strikeout rate has remained flat for the last four years, including 2021, and he is chasing fewer pitches out of the strike zone than ever before. Pitchers also haven’t changed their approach against him. Lindor is still seeing mostly fastballs with the same ratio of sliders, curveballs and change-ups as he did in previous years. We can also rule out the shift. Lindor sees a shift on 24 percent of his plate appearances as a left-handed hitter this season, more than half what it was in 2020 and 14 percent as a right-handed hitter, half as often as last season.

The problem is a lack of solid contact. Lindor simply isn’t hitting the ball on the sweet spot of the bat (also known as a barrel) as often. Instead, he is producing the lowest barrel rate of his career since his 2016 campaign.

Lindor is topping the ball more, leading to far fewer line drives and more groundballs, easily converted to outs.

The Mets’ $341-million man enjoyed his best game with his new team, slamming a game-tying, two-run homer in the seventh inning as the Mets registered arguably their biggest win of the season, 5-4 in 10 innings over the Diamondbacks at Citi Field. Yet following the game, the result became secondary to an out-of-sight disagreement, dutifully documented by the Mets’ own regional sports network, SNY, between Lindor and his double-play partner Jeff McNeil in the middle of the seventh inning.

That disagreement, a laughing Lindor told reporters a few minutes after the Mets prevailed on a swinging bunt by rookie Patrick Mazeika (his first career RBI), entailed whether Lindor and McNeil, situated in the tunnel that connects the home team’s dugout to its clubhouse saw a rat or a raccoon.

“I told [McNeil], ‘Hey, I’ve never seen a New York rat,’ ” Lindor explained. “So we went down sprinting to go see a New York rat. And he got mad at me. He’s like, ‘No, it’s not a rat, it’s a raccoon.’ I’m like, ‘Hell, no, man.’ … Crazy, because we were going back and forth whether it was a rat or raccoon.”

The New York Mets have offered a deal close to 10 years and $325 million to All-Star shortstop Francisco Lindor as the two sides continue to work toward an agreement, Andy Martino of SNY reported on Monday. Such a deal would be second only to Mookie Betts’ $365 million deal with the Dodgers among extensions signed by players with between five and six years of MLB service time—i.e., those in or headed into their walk years.

It’s not certain whether the Mets’ proposed contract would begin with the 2021 or 2022 season. If agreed to, the average annual value of $32.5 million would be the ninth-largest such figure in MLB history. The deal would also tie Giancarlo Stanton’s extension he signed with the Marlins as the fourth-largest in the history of the sport.