Right now David Wright in mired in a deep slump. In his last two games he is 0-6, and in his last five games he is 4-19. He’s seen his batting average drop from a respectable .415 to an abysmal .390.
Wright has been sensational this year, and he is showing the baseball world really how hard it is to hit .400 for an extended period of time. Wright has been at .400 or close to it for most of May. The lowest Wright’s batting average has been after a game this year was .361 which was on April 27th.
With all of Wright’s hits and his great contract he only has five home runs this season. If you extrapolate that for a whole season, he would hit 26 for the year. They aren’t great power numbers, but if you can hit .340 for a year with 26 home runs, that’s phenomenal. In addition to his great offense, Wright is playing some of the best defense of his career, defense at is on par, or even better, to when he won back-to-back Gold Gloves in 2007-2008.
After this year Wright has a club option on his contract for $16M with a $1M buyout. If he is traded he can void his option. This means next year Wright would be the same as Jason Bay, so maybe for that reason alone the Mets should bump up his pay. Wright’s last contract was signed back in 2007, which if the Mets don’t trade Wright this year, will be a seven year $71M deal.
By the start of the 2014 season Wright will be 31 years old. He still is under team control for another year, so there is no rush to give him an extension, but if the front office hasn’t started thinking about one they should probably start doing that.
So what type of extension would you give to a 31 year old, captain of the team, who has all these awards and honors? The correct answer is, probably more than what they offered Jose Reyes.
It’s uncertain how much Wright will be looking for, but the six year $100M contract that the Washington Nationals gave Ryan Zimmerman might be the jumping off point. Before this season started the Nationals locked up Zimmerman until at least 2019, paying him $126M until then. There is also an option for the 2020 season for $18M.
The common answer from Mets fans about Wright’s extension is “give him whatever he asks for”. For all that’s he done during his nine seasons here, it’s hard to disagree. Locking Wright up has to be a priority of this team. Trading him really isn’t an option right now, unless you can get a ridiculous amount for him.
Right now I would give Wright a six year $115M extension. It looks like he is going to have a monster year, which will jack-up his asking price a bit, but it’s not out of the Mets price range and they should be willing to give it to him. The deal would lock up Wright through his prime, until he is 36. The only thing the Mets have to worry about is that all these crazy contracts being handed out might get into Wright’s head. But I don’t think he is that type of player.
Alderson declined to comment on any potential contract negotiations Sunday, but he all but ruled out trading Wright this summer. “I certainly do not foresee, under any circumstances, David being a topic of discussion at the trade deadline,” Alderson said on 5-13-12.
If the team can afford Wright(and after the recent Madoff settlement, I think they can) then the Mets should pretty much go as high as they possibly can afford to without crippling the ability of signing and paying other players. Of course the Mets will in all likelihood be overpaying in the latter years of the contract but maybe the Mets would get what the Cardinals are getting out of Carlos Beltran in his sunset years.