A lot of this season my focus has been on just how awesome Jose Reyes is, but let’s not forget our Captain third baseman. David Wright is also a great player, and I feel it’s going a little unnoticed by those in the fan base that scream for change for change’s sake without stopping to appreciate what we have.
David Wright owns, or is in the process of owning, so many of the Mets offensive records. He’s 8th in games played, 1st in doubles, 4th in home runs, 2nd (by 12) in RBIs, 6th in stolen bases, 4th in walks, first in total bases, 2nd in runs and third in hits, although he may never get to first in those last two as he’s chasing teammate Jose Reyes. He trails only Darryl Strawberry and Mike Piazza in slugging percentage.
His 2007 season was one of the best offensive seasons in Mets history, and he did everything one player could do to try to will the Mets to the playoffs. He did the same in September of 2008.
| Year | G | PA | R | H | 2B | HR | RBI | SB | CS | BB | SO | TB | GDP | Awards | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2007 | 160 | 711 | 113 | 196 | 42 | 30 | 107 | 34 | 5 | 94 | 115 | .325 | .416 | .546 | .963 | 149 | 330 | 14 | AS,MVP-4,GG,SS |
He absolutely owns left-handed pitching. (To compare, Albert Pujols has a only marginally higher 1.085 OPS against lefties and that might just be the difference in slugging from playing in a slightly smaller park)
| I | Split | G | PA | AB | H | 2B | HR | RBI | BB | SO | TB | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| vs LHP as RHB | 505 | 1165 | 984 | 336 | 84 | 51 | 176 | 159 | 157 | .341 | .433 | .592 | 1.025 | 583 |
He played through pain with a broken back for a month earlier this season and still managed a game winning home run here and there. To that note, David Wright owns the Mets record for game-winning RBI.
Since returning from the disabled list he’s hitting .289/.364/.479 with 8 HR and 39 RBI in 54 games. That projects to 24 HR and 118 RBI over a full season and is just a handful of walks and maybe a home run or two off his career average. He’s got 42 strikeouts, which would be 123 over a full season, or much closer to the 115 he averaged over his first four full seasons. All that’s factoring in that he just had a rough 10 days or so both offensively and defensively.
Defensively he’s been a very up and down player. He went a month after returning from the DL where he looked amazing, making great catches, and great throws. Other times he goes through phases where he let’s balls get by him, and misses first base on his throws. I’m not going to break out any fancy statistics here, because defensive statistics are spotty in the absolute best case scenarios, and Wright hasn’t collected enough data to form any coherent opinion. There’s just too much noise in the data, but I’ve seen him play serious Gold Glove caliber defense, and I know he can do it again.
David Wright is a historic Met and in the prime of his career. He’s part of the 2012 solution and is a pleasure to watch every day. His value to the Mets franchise is just another reason another team is not going to blow Sandy Alderson away with an offer for him. The Mets need more franchise defining great players, and trading away one of them is not the way to do that.
