Welcome back to the Mets Beat newsletter! Anthony DiComo has covered the Mets for MLB.com since 2007, including the past 16 seasons full-time on the beat. |
NEW YORK -- Francisco Lindor is a five-time Major League All-Star, a shoe designer, a player in the fashion world and now … a host of his own show? Lindor’s newest creation, “Café con Lindor,” launched Tuesday, with its first episode featuring rapper and television personality Action Bronson. The concept is simple: think “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee” meets baseball. In each episode of the monthly content series, Lindor will interview a guest about their life, profession and love for coffee. “That’s why I created this,” Lindor said early in the pilot. “For me, Café con Lindor, it’s about the circle you create. Coffee is an amazing time to have conversations, to just talk about anything, to be quite honest. It just brings people together. It makes that circle tighter.” The show, which Major League Baseball is producing, is part of MLB’s broader mission to elevate player storytelling and deliver original content across digital and social platforms. It will stream on MLB’s and Lindor’s social channels, as well as on MLB.TV, Spotify and Apple Music. |
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“We are thrilled to collaborate with Francisco to help execute his vision and launch this conversation-driven original content series,” MLB vice president of player engagement and celebrity relations EJ Aguado said in a release announcing the show. “Assisting Francisco in bringing Café con Lindor to life is part of our ongoing commitment to elevate and amplify our players while also bringing fans closer to the personalities, stories and moments that make baseball so special.” For Lindor, the series gives him an opportunity to mingle with fellow celebrities from various walks of life, while also indulging in his love of coffee. It’s a relatively newfound passion for Lindor, who didn’t drink much coffee before coming to New York in 2021. That changed when Lindor met Dean Little, a former team employee who attended college in Melbourne, Australia -- one of the coffee capitals of the world. With Lindor at the center of the Mets’ growing coffee culture, the team added an espresso machine in the Citi Field clubhouse as well as a portable version that goes on the road. Many clubhouse conversations now take place around a cup of coffee, which is exactly the culture that Lindor wants to foster. “Coffee has become a way of me connecting with people,” he said. |
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Future episodes will take place throughout the five boroughs (the pilot was shot at Win Son Bakery in Brooklyn) and across the country.
“I might have baseball players. I might not,” Lindor said of future episodes. “Most of it, I want people from the outside that are not in the baseball world, so that we can talk about not really our jobs, to talk about life. To talk about anything. That’s the gist of Café con Lindor: just to have a cup of coffee, to talk about whatever we feel like talking about.” |
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MLB MORNING LINEUP PODCAST |
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Lindor on Monday extended his season-worst slump to 0-for-26. Who owns the Mets’ longest all-time hitless streak? A) Tommie Agee B) Lindor C) Ed Kranepool D) Rey Ordóñez |
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When the Mets recalled catcher Francisco Alvarez from Triple-A Syracuse on Monday, team officials described a player who had not merely accepted the challenge of his midsummer demotion to the Minors, but embraced it. The player who returned to Queens, they implied, was legitimately different. In his first chance to prove them right, Alvarez hit a crucial double to the right-field fence in the eighth inning Monday, strengthening the go-ahead rally in a 7-5 Mets win over the Angels. “We all wanted him here,” said Alvarez’s longtime friend and teammate Brett Baty. “For him to come back and have an impact like that in the game was huge for us.” If Alvarez can maintain anything close to this sort of production going forward, it would be a boon for a Mets club that entered this season counting on him to extend their lineup. That didn’t happen early in the year, as Alvarez hit .236/.319/.333 over his first 35 games. He was a shadow of the promising young power threat he had proven to be in 2023, when he clubbed 25 home runs as a 21-year-old. An offseason swing change designed to help him use the whole field resulted mostly in the degradation of his power. The tool that was his calling card as a prospect had disappeared. Then the Mets sent Alvarez back to Syracuse, where he hit 11 homers in 19 games, earning a quick return ticket to New York. When he approached home for his first plate appearance, a nearly sold-out Citi Field crowd rose to give him a standing ovation. Alvarez grounded to second in that at-bat but didn’t make another out the rest of the night. “It felt really good just because of all the struggles that I had earlier in the season,” Alvarez said through an interpreter, referencing the fan reaction. “The way that they’ve kept supporting me and the way that they received me today through all the hard work that I’ve been putting in, it felt really special to get that reception from the fans.” For more on Alvarez’s return and big first game, check out the full story from Monday night. |
Saturday was one of the more memorable days in Citi Field history. Scores of David Wright’s friends and family were on hand as the Mets retired his No. 5. Wright likened his experience to “that feeling you get when you come home from a long trip.” His number will now hang forever in Queens. |
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D) Ordóñez Ordóñez’s 0-for-37 streak in 1997 was the longest in franchise history. Lindor’s current skid is one shy of his career-long 0-for-27 slump in 2016. |
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