Nothing rational suggests that the Cleveland Guardians should be a better baseball team than the New York Mets.
When you consider that almost six years ago, the then-Indians traded their superstar shortstop Francisco Lindor to those very Mets, and don’t have a starter on their current roster from the return to that trade, it would make it all that much more unlikely.
But here the 2026 MLB playoffs have reached the League Championship Series, and it’s the Guardians who are still alive in the ALCS.
The Mets didn’t even make the postseason. They weren’t close.
And so something becomes quickly clear — whatever the Guardians have, the Mets don’t.
It’s some of that intangible, hard-to-define aspect of sports. In Cleveland, they call their route to success “Guards Ball,” but that sells it short.
The Guardians, like fellow LCS participants the Milwaukee Brewers and Tampa Bay Rays, have figured out how to do more with less.
The Mets haven’t figured out how to do more with everything.
Francisco Lindor Trade
On Jan. 7, 2021, Cleveland and the Mets agreed to a trade.
The deal sent Lindor and Carlos Carrasco to the Mets.
Cleveland got back Andres Gimenez, Amed Rosario, Josh Wolf and Isaiah Greene.
Wolf and Greene never even made it to the major leagues.
Rosario and Gimenez started for Cleveland for a time, but they aren’t around anymore.
The Guardians eventually traded Gimenez as part of a three-team deal that brought five players back to Cleveland — none of whom are starting now. The most notable was Luis Ortiz, who is now out of baseball for his role in a gambling scandal.
So the point here is this: The Guardians, by measure of talent, lost the Lindor trade by miles.
Yet somehow it hasn’t set Cleveland back.
So What’s Missing?
The answer for the Mets has something to do with the fact that money doesn’t solve every problem, even in a sport without a salary cap.
That’s been true for most of baseball’s existence, even in the 21st century as salaries have ballooned.
Sure, the teams with money often win — the Dodgers have won back-to-back World Series titles.
But over the course of a 162-game regular season, it’s the teams who have solved this sport beyond just big contracts that find ways to win lots of games.
The Guardians have figured it out. The Brewers and Rays have, too.
The Dodgers have it so figured out that they win both in the way small-market teams do but also while possessing big-market contracts and talent.
But then some teams, like the Mets, flounder.
It’s not Lindor’s fault. It’s just ironic.
Cleveland traded away Lindor because the future outlook of his contract looked like too much for them to keep around.
But even without him, they’ve been just fine. Lindor probably wishes he was still playing baseball this October (or last October, for that matter).
Mets, Francisco Lindor Missing Something as Cleveland Plays On