Okay, so David Wright has a lot of fans here in our fair city. And David Wright gets a lot of slack here because he loves being a Met and because I get the feeling that it would really hurt him to leave. Most if not all players will tell you, if asked, that they want to stay where they are. What else are they going to say? With David, a guy who grew up a Mets fan, when he says it I truly believe he means it 110% when trade rumors swirl and reporters ask him about it. And I think most fans do too. And that’s a main reason why he gets slack when he’s struggling. And he deserves this slack. I’m certainly not going to treat him with the scorn that, say, Jeremy Roenick would give to Patrick Marleau. David Wright is a friend of the program.
But I would like to ask all of you this, and there’s no wrong answer: When do we start worrying about him?
And I don’t mean in the way that “he never comes through in the clutch”, which is swirling around a lot these days. Yeah, it’s frustrating when somebody consistently comes up small in these big spots. But forget about that. Just look at black and white: .240 … David Wright is a .240 hitter. He hit .240 in April, and .240 overall so far. He’s had five full months in his career that were similarly bad: August ’06 (.245), April ’07 (.244), September ’09 (.239 … after coming back from the Matt Cain beaning so this shouldn’t even count), and then two last season … May (.248), and August (.225). Why should the start of this season be any different from those earlier slumps?
Well like I said: September ’09 shouldn’t even count. The slumps in ’10? Easily attributed to being the lone decent hitter in that lineup, not seeing fastballs, and being pitched inside a lot. Tough to deal with. ’06 and ’07? Hey, we’re all entitled to bad months. What makes this different simply for me is that he can’t catch up to 93 mph fastballs from Vicente Padilla. He struck out to end a 4-2 loss as the tying run against Padilla, who really didn’t do anything special against Wright. He threw fastballs down the middle … and Wright couldn’t do a thing with them. It was so bad that with the count at 1-2, I knew the game was over. And sure enough, Wright swung and missed at strike three. The explanations aren’t there anymore. The lineup support is better than it was the last two seasons. The beaning was a long time ago. Yet Wright isn’t hitting. And if Wright isn’t hitting, then forget about getting decent starting pitching, forget about bounce back seasons from Carlos Beltran and Jason Bay, forget about any improvement the bullpen may get. If Wright isn’t hitting, it’s game over … and don’t get used to .440 baseball because it’ll get worse.
Of course, you can go the other way and say well 15-19 isn’t bad when the face of the franchise is only hitting .240 so far. Well fair or not, this team can’t survive ordinary play from a star like other teams can. The 2006 Mets, who were good, went 19-9 in August when Wright hit .245 … and 15-9 when he hit .244 to start ’07. This team? The bullpen is flammable, Chris Young has a better chance of straightening out the Mets finances than pitching meaningful innings for them (he did go to Princeton, you know), some imposter has the real Jason Bay tied up in a closet somewhere, someone wiped the leprechaun remians off the bottom of R.A. Dickey’s spikes, Jenrry Mejia’s elbow is in worse shape than Rajon Rondo’s elbow, Carlos Beltran is searching for a fountain or youth to dip his knee brace in, Ronny Paulino is taking baserunning lessons from Fluff Castro, and next up is Troy Tulowitzki, who’s batting .003since leaving Citi Field and looking for Mets pitchers to get healthy against.
I’m not picking on him, but with great talent comes great responsibility. And it’s Wright’s responsibility to be David Wright, now more than ever. Or at least hit ordinary fastballs from fill-in closers.
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