Disgruntled Mets Fan

A lot has been said about David Wright’s hot and cold streaks so far this season.  It’s time to take a look at the numbers.  I’ve charted Wright’s batting average for each game as the season has moved forward.  It seems that Wright had steady growth from the 18th game of the season all the way up to the 41st, increasing his average from .271 to .362.  In the 10 games following, Wright’s average dropped a full 41 points to .321.  In that span, in his 35 at bats, Wright struck out 13 times with only 6 hits and 4 walks.  From game 52 to game 62, Wright brought his average right back up to .365, in a span where it seemed he could not be retired.  Wright had 24 hits and 7 walks in 43 at bats while only striking out 7 times during an 11 game hitting streak.  Since that streak ended, Wright has failed to get on base in 3 of the last 6 games, striking out 9 times.  One ray of hope for Wright is that he notched 3 hits in the Mets loss last night without striking out.  Maybe this slump will be a shortened version of the one he pulled himself out of after 10 games earlier this month.

Wright’s batting average has been a talking point for the Mets announcers all season.  Instead of talking about how well Wright is hitting, how about they discuss his lack of RBI?

Wright is on pace for 94 RBI this season.  Sure that’s a decent number for most players, but it’s well below the production we saw last year.  He only has 8 multi-RBI games on the season so far.  To date, Wright has been to the plate with a total of 232 runners on base and is responsible for 17%, or 39 of them scoring.  That percentage is on par with Wright’s career percentage of 18%, and is only 2 percentage points off of last years 19%, a year where Wright drove in 124 runs.  The lack of production must be coming from other areas.  Possibly a lack of base runners in front of Wright?  A lack of protection behind him?  Both are possibilities due to the injuries of Jose Reyes and Carlos Delgado.  The Mets are also not making things easy for themselves by giving up extra outs.  The team as a whole has been caught stealing 20 times, although 8 of those can be attributed to Wright himself.  They have also made 36 outs on base, be it trying to advance on a fly ball out, or trying to leg out an extra base on a hit, which is the most in the Major Leagues. These types of mistakes shorten innings, giving you less of a chance to score runs.  When your team is not hitting home runs to create instant offense, you need to manufacture runs, and running yourself out of an inning makes that a lot tougher.

I’m going to the games tonight and tomorrow.  Hopefully it doesn’t suck as much as I fear it might.  It should be fun to see Citi Field try and contain a ball off Albert Pujols’ bat.

Let’s…
Go…

Never mind