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A Letter to D-Wright

By Andrew Beaton on June 30, 2009 at 6:45 am  

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Dear David Wright,

Greetings! Hey, broski!

You have by no means had a poor year.  Going into last night you were batting .342. That’s pretty gosh darn good.  Your .919 OPS isn’t too shabby either. 

My real question is: where has your power gone?  Are you aware that you currently have the lowest slugging percentage you’ve had in your entire Major League career?

Seriously, if the Mets wanted a player with mediocre power and a good batting average, Omar Minaya would call call the Pirates and demand for Freddy Sanchez.   

Perhaps Citi Field has had an effect on you – you do have a noticeable difference between your home and road splits.  Your batting average, slugging percentage and on base percentage are all higher on the road.  Still, you have one home run on the road this year.  That’s only one more home run than I have on the road this year, and you have 130 more at-bats than I do. 

Can Citi really be that intimidating though? C’mon broham it’s a baseball field.  Maybe the fence is a few feet deeper and higher in a couple places, but that doesn’t account for such a dramatic drop off in production.  Maybe you’ve changed your swing some to adjust to the new surroundings, but whatever you’ve changed isn’t good.  The team can deal with your power outages when Carlos Delgado and Carlos Beltran are in the lineup, but certainly not now.

Beyond the power,  your head doesn’t appear to be in the right place.  You have to understand, that other than you – and Gary Sheffield when he’s able to play – the Mets’ lineup would be on the bench for most major league teams.  Knowing this, you’ve still been unbelievably passive at the dish.  When there are guys on first and second with one out, why do you take strike three so often? Are you looking for the walk? Even if you walk, it would be spoiled by Fernando ”GIDP” Tatis. 

I swear, I want to slap you every time you take strike three, which happens all too often.  When you’re batting third or fourth, you are being paid to hit the ball, not to leave the bat on your shoulder.  If you’re gonna strike out, at least go down taking a huge whack at the ball, not watching it sail into the catchers glove and then staring at the ground with that dejected look Mets fans have become way too accustomed to this year.  

Don’t confuse this with hate mail, or hate e-mail, or hate whatever you want to call it.  In fact, it is truly the opposite; I probably care too much about watching you live up to your potential and play how you should and can.

Sincerely,

Andrew Beaton


Posted in Commentary and featimage • Comments



  • Sure, Lets kill the best player on the team. You know hitting a baseball isn't that easy right?

    Wright goes from knowing he's the only one that will get it done, to knowing that one guy can't get it done and he should be selective. He's in an impossible situation. He could be selective and take the billion walks he'd get and hope the guys behind him suddenly start hitting, or Manuel finally stops putting Tatis there. Or he could try to get a hit. Part of the power outage is the general approach the Mets have preached this year. Going the other way, battling in atbats. Other parts of it is just that they never throw him pitches to hit out. Especially lately. They do what they can to get him out on the corners and whatnot, and if they walk him, so be it, but if they get the calls, hit the spots, gravy.

    This is one of the reasons Babe Ruth is still probably the best to ever play the game. he routinely homered on pitches outside the strikezone. he could go days without seeing a strike. And he hit it so hard that even his pop-ups went so high and came down so hard they were frequently dropped.
  • Hey, crazy idea, let's cut our best player some slack while surrounded by a lineup in which Ryan Church is a legitimate cleanup hitter. It's not like he's been bad...Just chill. The power will come. It's not some weird approach or anything. Tell me, if Wright had 10 HRs right now but was leading the league in hitting, would you be worried? No. And that's funny, because Wright has lost 6 HRs to Citi Field's dimensions already.
  • zippe
    well said!
  • Andrew_Beaton
    Like I said in the first real sentence, he is by no means having a bad year - in fact he is doing quite well in some respects. None of this however, explains why he is so passive at the plate and has taken so many called strikeouts. It's one thing if he is swinging and missing, but nothing is more frustrating than when he goes down without at least trying to hit the ball. When he is the only really good hitter in the lineup, he shouldn't be trying to grind out walks, he should be trying to drive in runs. Nothing is wrong with a walk, but there is something wrong when drawing a walk appears to be his main goal.
  • sarge
    Wow, someone has in for David. I agree with you JoeD yet I am seeing a young man who suddenly has had the problems of this team thrown on him while he is still trying to figure out Citi field. I think that he will work it out by all star break and have one of his usual stretch run streaks that will feature his power. I have faith that it will all come back to him. At least he is putting the ball in play, maybe not over the fence but I hope that tonight's game will get his power rolling esp with CBP coming up this weekend. LGM!
  • sarge
    Sorry Andrew did not mean to call you JoeD. My bad.
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