Why Everyone Needs to Get Off of David Wright

Seeing David Wright absolutely lose it yesterday actually pleased me to a large degree. If you haven’t seen the video, I highly recommend you watch (and listen closely for some colorful language). It’s good to finally see David show some emotion on the field on what was clearly a ludicrous strike call. Eli Whiteside had set up on the outside corner for a 3-2 fastball and Wilson threw a fastball that was actually OFF THE PLATE INSIDE. Whiteside moved his glove all the way across the plate, caught the ball, then moved it back over the inside corner. Somehow, the umpire called Wright out, and David promptly turned around and cussed him out, being thrown out almost immediately.

But this is actually not my point. I have a few scatterbrained ideas that I want to make clear.

When David Wright reached 1000 hits, he became part of some interesting company, to say the least. Only three other players reached 1000 hits as quickly as Wright did with as many home runs him. Who are they?

Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and Joe DiMaggio.

David Wright is a superstar, and that should be uncontested. The knocks on him come from ridiculous Mets fans who are way too critical and pessimistic. This site is called the Disgruntled Mets Fan, but I personally will never completely rail out David Wright.

I have criticisms of him, however. I have never seen a player tinker as much as him; he has constantly fixed things that weren’t broken over the course of his career. In 2005-2007, he had a consistent approach that worked for him. In 2008, he started to get a little pull and power-happy, lengthening his swing. It didn’t end up hurting him; he hit 3 more homers, knocked in 17 more runs, but hit for 18 points lower in batting average. But nonetheless he should have stuck with the old approach.

Last year he just tried to push everything the other way…which was dumb. This year, he has gotten back to a point where he is somewhere between his 2007 form and his 2008 form. He has his power back, which is great, but he is striking out a ton and seems like more of an all-or-nothing hitter. He’s walking more this year, which he didn’t do last year, but he’s been very ineffective with two strikes. He used to be great at going the other way with two strikes.

Mechanically, Wright used to have a very quiet swing in 2005-2007, with little to no movement prior to the pitch. He has developed a hitch, and this is a hard habit to break. But I think if he continues to watch film he can get back to that old swing of his.

Defensively, UZR states that Wright regressed as a defender last year after two well above-average years that followed two below-average years. This year, he’s right at 0 (average). The main thing that declined for Wright was his range…I can’t argue with the sabermetrics, but this doesn’t make sense to me. Personally, I think that UZR is something that is going to vary from year to year. For his career, Wright is slightly below average. I think he’s an above average, but not great fielder. He seems to have fixed his throwing quirk in recent weeks, and I can’t really see how his range is worse now than it was back then. Perhaps he is playing closer to the batter. Perhaps his reflexes have slowed a bit since he’s put on more muscle in recent years. I don’t know, but his defense has still been good. He is very good at making plays that are difficult. I have faith in him defensively.

Finally, the knock on Wright as a “bad hitter with runners in scoring position.”

I’m not of the group that believes exclusively that hitters are generally the same in all situations. I do think some players change their approach or tense up in certain situations. You might extrapolate that those who keep their composure are “clutch.” But the idea that some players are BETTER in these situations is actually wrong, and cannot be proven by statistics. “Clutch” is really just the ability to perform the same way over a variety of situations.

David Wright’s career average is .307. With nobody on base, it’s .304. With runners on, it’s .311. With runners in scoring position, it’s .302. With RISP and 2 outs, it’s .249. With the bases loaded, it’s .351.

Here’s a little logic lesson. David Wright has batted mostly third or fifth in his career. When you’re David Wright, and batting fifth (with Sean Green or Cliff Floyd or Ryan Church or Jeff Francoeur or whoever batting sixth), you’re less likely to get good pitches with RISP, hence a slightly lower average. The same is even more true with RISP and 2 outs. However, I will concede that David might tense up with RISP and 2 outs. Fine.

When batting third, Wright probably gets better pitches to hit in these situations. Hence an average that is just off his career mark.

With the bases loaded, every player should have a higher average. The pitcher doesn’t want to walk you, so you will get better pitches to hit. Hence, all these numbers can be explained without cryptic, generally, unprovable theories about “clutch” and “grit” and other such nonsense. Indeed, Wright’s numbers don’t reflect his struggles lately. But the key is to look at the general, larger sample size.

And just for reference, here are the respective numbers of a few players referred to as either “clutch” or “unclutch.”

Going like this: Career BA/Career BA with bases empty/Career BA with runners on/Career RISP/Career RISP & 2 outs/Career bases loaded

Derek Jeter: .297/.291/.306/.361/.438/.333

Derek Jeter is a player who performs well over a wide variety of situations. I will give it to him that he is a guy who is better in high-leverage situations. But this is to a degree a function of his actual hitting approach-he loves taking the ball the other way with authority. Pitchers are more likely to pitch any batter away with runners on, which actually plays to Jeter’s strength. What makes Derek such a good hitter is that he can also pull that inside pitch out of the park. But in general, pitchers never want to make a mistake inside because the ball is more prone to leave the yard.

Also, by the way, Derek Jeter’s career numbers in the playoffs are almost exactly the same as in the regular season with slightly higher slugging. Just another thing to think about when people praise him for being so much better in October. Why is this? He’s been to the playoffs so much that he’s able to generate a significant sample size that levels out over time.

Alex Rodriguez: .304/.301/.308/.301/.271/.342

This accurately reflects my theory. A-Rod’s always been knocked for being an un-clutch player. But he generally performs in the same way that Wright and most major leaguers do across situations (relatively).

Albert Pujols: .333/.331/.336/.345/.327/.409

Pujols performs almost exactly the same almost every situation. With the bases loaded, he is better, like every other hitter I have mentioned.

Chase Utley: .296/.287/.305/.291/.280/.333

See where I’m going with this?

David Wright gets a terrible rep for being a bad hitter in big spots. But people love to have selective memories. Who knocked in the Mets’ run in Game 7 of the 2006 NLCS? Who carried the offense through September 2007 (.352/.432/.602)? Who performed all September 2008 (.340/.416/.577) but had the entire month destroyed by one bad at-bat with a runner on third and no outs?

Does anyone appreciate how difficult it is to play 162 games in around 180 days? And he did his best work in the last month. No wonder a guy like Reyes gets tired in the final month and doesn’t perform as well.

Here’s the rub. There’s never been a player as good as Wright for the first six years of his career who just suddenly became mediocre from messing with his swing. David Wright has the potential to hit 400 home runs, get 3000 hits, and hit .300 for his career. That’s Hall-of-Fame caliber play. He’s one or two years from being the best offensive player in Mets history (statistically), which I think he already is, hands-down.

Get off this guy and learn to appreciate him, because if somehow he ends up gone (which I don’t think will happen), you will miss him more than anyone.