Mike Francesa: Juan Soto-Francisco Lindor relationship ‘not good,’ Mets will try to trade Lindor

Mike Francesa doesn’t believe a word of the Juan Soto-Francisco Lindor reconciliation story, and he says the Mets don’t either.

Soto and Lindor told The Athletic on Friday that reports of tension between them are overblown, with Lindor calling Soto “my brother” and Soto comparing their relationship to a slow-building romance: “When you meet a girl, you don’t start kissing her right away.” Owner Steve Cohen backed that up earlier in the week, confirming a clash in 2025, while telling the NY Post that the two stars are “getting along much better.”

Francesa says his own sources tell him something different.

“I don’t think they get along at all,” Francesa said on his eponymous podcast. “Everything I’ve heard all along is that they don’t like each other. So they can say what they want. Just like last year, there wasn’t any issues. Nonsense. This year, there’s not any issue.”

Lindor was, in Francesa’s words, the “golden boy” of the franchise before the Mets signed Soto to a 15-year, $765 million contract that more than doubled Lindor’s own $341 million deal.

“This was Lindor’s team. He was the golden boy. The Cohens loved him, Cohen’s wife loved him,” Francesa said. “And then they went out and brought in a guy who more than doubled his salary, which hit him right between the eyes… I don’t know how Lindor is. If he’s very sensitive, I don’t know that stuff. What I do know is that he clearly felt this was his team, and then a guy came in who is not only a bigger star, but a much better hitter. Lindor’s a good all-around player. Soto is a great hitter.”

Back in December, Francesa told his audience he’d checked with his own sources and found that Lindor never called Soto to welcome him to the team, souring the relationship from the start, though Lindor has publicly said the opposite happened. Francesa also claimed at the time that the Mets’ separate rift between Lindor and Brandon Nimmo traced back to politics, with the two players split over Donald Trump. Nimmo was traded to the Texas Rangers this past offseason for Marcus Semien.

The dysfunction has shown up in other corners, too. Soto missed nearly three weeks with a calf strain before returning to the lineup on April 22, in the middle of a 12-game losing streak. Asked before that game whether he’d been checking in with teammates during the skid, Soto stunned Mets beat reporters by admitting he hadn’t spoken to a single teammate during a 12-game losing streak because “they’ve been on the road most of the time.” The Athletic later reported that Mets players didn’t see it as any real issue, but the answer went viral anyway, with Gary Sheffield Jr. noting that it also seemed to confirm Lindor, the team’s captain, doesn’t talk much with the franchise’s best player either.

Francesa has been just as pointed about the people running the organization. When the Mets fired manager Carlos Mendoza in June with the team sitting a season-worst 13 games under .500 — they entered Monday 16 games under — Francesa used his podcast to skip past Mendoza and team president David Stearns and go straight at owner Steve Cohen, who bought the team for $2.4 billion in 2020 and is spending nearly $400 million on this year’s roster.

“The owner went on five-and-a-half years ago with a big wallet and a big mouth and made big promises, and now he’s in the witness protection program,” Francesa said, referencing Cohen’s early vow that anything short of a championship within three to five years would be a disappointment. “Right now, your franchise is a complete and utter disgrace.”

Francesa says the plan now taking shape inside the organization is to build the roster around Soto, Carson Benge, and A.J. Ewing, and let Lindor go elsewhere, even though his contract runs through 2031 and recently converted into a full no-trade clause.

“I don’t think there’s any question the Mets are going to try very, very hard to trade Lindor,” Francesa said.

Whether that aforementioned youth movement is enough to offset trading away a $341 million shortstop remains to be seen. For now, Francesa says the sourcing hasn’t changed since last winter.

“Someone who I trust very much told me this started when the only one who did not call him when he came to the Mets was Lindor,” Francesa added. “And it kind of went from there/ They’ve had their ups and downs, but I still hear it’s not good. Now, Cohen addressed that when he did his interview and said, ‘Oh, I hear it’s much better now.’ That’s not what someone’s telling me. So unless they’re telling me something wrong, they’re telling me that it’s not any better. That’s never going to be good, and it’s time for Lindor to leave.

“And I think the Mets have decided that, from what I understand, they are trying to trade him, or will be trying to trade him in the next couple of weeks.”

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