Francisco Lindor and Javier Baez Apologize as Mets Sweep Doubleheader

In an attempt to squash a growing rift between Mets players and the team’s fans, the infielders Javier Baez and Francisco Lindor apologized Tuesday for their recent thumbs-down gestures, which caused outrage among fans and within the organization.

The gesture, Baez admitted Sunday, was directed at fans in retaliation for booing the team in recent weeks.

After Baez revealed the inside nature of the signal, which was usually made on the basepaths toward the team’s dugout after the player got a big hit, Sandy Alderson, the team president, condemned the players in a statement, calling it “totally unacceptable.”

“Thumbs down, for me, means the adversity we have gone through, the negative things, we have overcome it,” Lindor said. “We did it, we went over it. However, it was wrong and I apologize to whoever I offended. It was not my intent to offend people. You can’t go against the fans.”

Lindor added, “It doesn’t look good on our part.”

Lindor came to bat to a mixture of boos and cheers from a smattering of fans in the first inning of Tuesday’s makeshift doubleheader — the first game was the resumption of a game against the Marlins that started on April 11 and the second was the team’s regularly scheduled game against Miami. He went 0 for 3 with a walk.

Baez, though, became the story of the day. He entered the game as a pinch-hitter in the eighth inning to a chorus of boos, but in the ninth he was at the center of a shocking four-run comeback, driving in a run with an infield single and racing from first to home to score the game-winning run in an improbable 6-5 victory.

Before the game, Steven Cohen, the owner of the Mets, applauded Lindor and Baez for apologizing and asked fans to get behind them for Tuesday’s games.

“Glad to hear our players apologizing to the fans,” he wrote.

Manager Luis Rojas said the team held a meeting before the game to discuss the matter.

Baez, who is a close friend of Lindor’s, was acquired on July 30 for an outfield prospect, Pete Crow-Armstrong, and the team lost 11 of its next 15 games. He will be a free agent after the season. As the losing continued in recent weeks, the fans booed more vociferously and, according to Baez, some players developed the thumbs-down gesture as a way of saying that if the fans can boo the players when they play poorly, the players can boo the fans when the team has success.

“I didn’t mean to offend anybody,” Baez said. “It’s something I’ve done in the past to the other team.”

Baez said that he might have said something wrong about booing the fans and that he really meant it toward his teammates.

There were only 8,199 fans at Citi Field for the first game, and Baez was not in the starting lineup. When he came to bat as a pinch-hitter in the eighth inning, the crowd loudly booed him. He ended up being hit with a 94-mile-an-hour fastball but stayed in the game at second base for the ninth inning.

He then got a chance to flip the script with Mets fans, coming to the plate with two on and two out in the bottom of the ninth and the Mets trailing by two runs. Portions of the crowd began chanting his name, and he drove a run in by beating out an infield single. When Michael Conforto’s infield single ended up in the outfield, by way of an error, Baez raced from first to home, sliding past catcher Alex Jackson to win the game.

The tiny crowd managed to seem raucous as players celebrated on the field.

“In short, winning cures everything,” Conforto said after the game.