After playing in the first 63 games of the season, and not performing anything close to what we have come to expect, Terry Collins finally gave David Wright a day off. Combined with the scheduled off day, Wright had two days to reflect, decompress, chill or whatever it is that pro players do when they’re not in the lineup. Will it have any affect? Nobody knows but it’s hard to see how it could get much worse. Here’s Wright’s line so far in 2014:
.279/.334/.378
The .712 OPS would be by far the lowest of his career if he finished the year with that mark. Last year, Wright posted a .904 OPS, his highest mark since recording a .924 mark back in 2008, when he was age 25.
Let’s say that the two days off invigorate Wright and spark him to be the player that he was last year. What would his final numbers look like? For a quick and dirty answer, let’s just add his 2013 and 2014 lines together. Yes, that would give us 175 games played (hence the quick and dirty remark above) which doesn’t quite work. But look past that for a moment. If we add his last two years together, Wright finishes with the following line:
.296/.370/.462
At this point in time, that’s probably the best-case scenario for Wright. Let’s take a moment and compare that to our preseason projections. The official site projection was for Wright to have an .893 OPS. So, in what was just identified as the best-case scenario, he is going to fall 61 points shy of what we expected coming into the season.
Yikes.
So, if an .832 OPS is best-case, what’s a reasonable forecast? FanGraphs has two projection models that update daily with expected end of season numbers. ZiPS projects he’ll finish with a .757 OPS and Steamer predicts a .766 mark.
For better or worse, the Mets’ offense is built around Wright. And it looks like he’s going to finish the year with around a .760 OPS. We can talk about lineup optimization and strikeouts and hitting with RISP. But this offense is simply not going to work with its best player producing like this.