Rumors of David Wright’s demise are greatly exaggerated.
When Curtis Granderson stumbled out of the gate, the fans quickly began to jeer. When you sign a 4-year, $60 million contract you are expected to perform at a high level immediately.
But when Wright stumbled and struggled to regain his footing after nearly five weeks, the tide began to turn and criticism was hurled his way. It wasn’t unjustified either – Wright was about effective at the plate as the now departed Omar Quintanilla.
Over the past week, however, the two hottest hitters on the team have been Granderson and Wright. The following table is of Wright and Granderson’s production from the week of 5/18 – 5/24:
| AVG | OBP | SLG | wOBA | wRC+ | ISO | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Granderson | .474 | .524 | .895 | .596 | 295 | .421 |
| Wright | .524 | .545 | .762 | .568 | 275 | .238 |
By wOBA, Granderson has been the best hitter in the National League, and Wright is fifth, behind Granderson, Garrett Jones, Yasiel Puig and Carlos Gomez.
What is less impressive is that in that span, the Mets’ record is 1-4 (this doesn’t include the double header split on Sunday). So despite the great performances from Wright and Granderson recently, the team’s record hasn’t reflected that.
Part of the blame for that has to rest on the putrid performance from the rest of the lineup – every other Mets position player has combined for a whopping 0.0 fWAR. Fifteen players combined are exactly replacement level. Two of the five players (other than Wright and Granderson) with positive hitting fWARs are Jon Niese and Jacob deGrom.
That’s part of the reason that despite their tearing the cover off the ball, Wright and Granderson have combined for four RBI over the past week. Kind of hard to get RBIs with nobody getting on in front of you.
We also shouldn’t pretend like the pitching has been fantastic either. The staff has an ERA of 4.30 (125 ERA-), and an RA9-WAR of -0.3. Outside of Zack Wheeler, Carlos Torres and Jenrry Mejia, nobody has pitched particularly well, even if the results are somewhat good, the process has been bad (see Scott Rice).
Other than Wright and Granderson, the rest of the team has been worse than a group of Quad-A level players.
It’s a popular narrative that one guy gets hot and “carries” a team for a stretch during the season, but if there’s anything that could dispel that myth, here it is.
Baseball – like every other team sport – cannot be won simply by one or two players. It takes a team effort. Without a decent surrounding cast, not even Babe Ruth could lead a team to 90 wins.
Hopefully everyone else will start to pick up the slack now that Wright and Granderson are beginning to break out.
Joe Vasile is the voice of the Fayetteville SwampDogs.
Granderson wright Lagares Murphy core heaters but mets need a shortstop first baseman catcher and left fielder I’m not a Yankee fan but at least they spend money to get best player in each position. I do know that Chris young should be released swallow the 7 million. Try Eric Campbell at first base duda not the answer.
Where is there attendance figures for Citi Field?
The NY Post said “about 3,000 fans” but I think that was either a joke, or it was at the end of game 2, yesterday.
What was the Banner Day double header attendance?
Also, David Wright is hitting, but his body language is downtrodden and defeated.
30,785 paid. Much less attended.
We are 12/15 in NL attendance
In the stretch you identified, Wright had 3 XBH to give him a .238 ISO. But if we include yesterday’s DH and the day before your stretch, when Wright had four hits in 11 ABs, we see his ISO drop 82 points.
Currently, Wright is succeeding thanks to a BABIP (.466 in May) that is high even by his standards.
For the month of May, Wright has fanned 4X as often as he’s walked and he has a 22.9 K%. When you combine that with 2 HR in 99 ABs – it’s a troubling line.
I found a photo from yesterday showing the crowd differential between Game 1 and Game 2.
Incredible.
A bit off topic: Why hasn’t Brandon Nimmo been promoted to AA? He’s about .350 in Single A.
Ike Davis is now batting .303 for Pittsburg. Lucas? He’s leaving lots and lots of men on base.
Here it is:
Perhaps the 3,000 at the end of Game 2 was not a joke, but a commentary.