By Jorge Arangure Jr.
New York Times
On a rainy evening June 12 at Citi Field, in the 11th inning of a tie game against the Milwaukee Brewers, David Wright took off from first base on a steal attempt and dived safely into second.
The rain that night had turned the field into a mess, and Wright’s headfirst slide - normally, he goes in feet first - did not go smoothly. He landed awkwardly and almost immediately felt pain in his left shoulder.
That play has come to partly define Wright’s 2014 campaign, and it may turn into a major talking point for New York Mets fans, coaches and executives when the season ends. Was this the moment when Wright’s season took an irreversible turn for the worse, an explanation of sorts for his very modest numbers this year? Or was it just the sort of dent that players always accumulate and, as such, not really a good excuse for the way he has been hitting?
And if the latter is indeed the case, then Wright’s numbers this year create an uneasy thought - that with his 32nd birthday approaching in December, and with the Mets still owing him more than $100 million through the 2020 season, he might be slipping a little bit as the team’s franchise player.
Barring a late-season surge, Wright, could end up with career lows in on-base percentage and slugging percentage. He is even unlikely to match last year’s total of 18 home runs that he posted in only 112 games. And Wright’s slugging percentage this season stands as the fourth worst among starting third baseman in the majors.
This is not, it should be noted, the first time that Wright has stumbled as a hitter. In 2009, in the Mets’ first season at Citi Field, Wright hit only 10 home runs as he struggled with the cavernous dimensions of the stadium’s outfield. In 2011, he played in pain for weeks before it was discovered that he had a stress fracture in his back. He batted just .254 that season, in 102 games.
In 2012 and 2013, however, he batted .306 and then .307. All seemed well, until now.
“He hasn’t had the typical David Wright year,” manager Terry Collins said. “Unfortunately, he set a standard pretty high. When you don’t reach that bar each and every year, suddenly everyone is thinking that he’s going downhill. I don’t think that’s true at all. I do believe David Wright will bounce back, whether it’s next week or next year.”
On a recent Saturday, in a game against the Chicago Cubs, Wright was hit on his sore shoulder by a pitch, and he sat out the next day. After being hit, Wright lamented that the pitch struck the exact spot that has bothered him since June 12, although in typical Wright fashion, he has stopped short of using the injury as any sort of rationale for why he is struggling.
Actually, he may be right. Before the game on June 12, Wright’s key numbers were not much different than they are now. For instance, at that point, he had .697 on-base plus slugging percentage, and he has never had an OPS figure lower than .750 in his professional career.
“I hold myself to a very high standard, and I feel like I’ve set a high standard for myself,” Wright said. “When I don’t reach that standard, obviously, I’m disappointed. There’s no sense in whining or moaning about it now. I got however many weeks to get it going a little bit, and hopefully, finish strong.”
Some of Wright’s peripheral statistics this season do match up with his career numbers, according to various advanced metrics. His 23.3 percent line-drive rate is actually higher than his career average of 22.6 percent. He has swung at 27.4 percent of pitches out of the strike zone this season, which is only slighter higher than the 26.4 percent he posted last year. His 46.5 percent overall-swing rate is almost identical to his 46.3 rate of last year.
But one glaring difference is that his fly balls are not traveling as far as they have been in the past. This season, Wright has posted a 5.9 percent fly-ball-to-home-run rate, which is less than half of his 13.1 percent career average.
“I do believe that, due to the injury in the first half, he made some adjustments in his swing and he changed a little bit,” Collins said. “He’s been swinging the bat very good lately. But everybody expects so much out of him.”
Wright has dismissed the notion that residual effects from the injury have affected his swing, but he acknowledges that his overall struggles have caused him to rethink his approach. But even those adjustments are not something out of the ordinary, Wright said, noting that he has tinkered with his swing almost every season.
“I’ve kind of been searching, mechanically,” Wright said. “I think that you don’t get the results that you want and, all of a sudden, you start messing with some things, and then it becomes that grind and that search you always hear people talk about.”
The question is whether that search for answers will continue into next season.
