New York Mets: Analyzing David Wright After One Month

After David Wright of the New York Mets was diagnosed with spinal stenosis in 2015, the expectations on his present day numbers and career longevity were toned down. The seven-time All-Star was once a lock to hit around .300, but now he’s one of the biggest question marks in the lineup. With April in the books, this article will use sabermetric stats to examine how the face of the franchise performed, and if their is any indications of what we can expect over the course of a full season.

After watching one month and change of Mets baseball, it’s clear that the offense is better than it was at this time last year. The man capturing all the attention is the new kid on the block, and rightfully so.

At just 23-years-old, Michael Conforto is doing some incredible things in the majors, despite not having much minor league experience. He has a slash line of .315/.398/.573 with four home runs and 18 RBI – but even more impressive than that is the fact that he leads the majors in hard hit ball percentage.

With 50% of the balls off his bat being recorded as hard hits, Conforto is tearing the cover off the ball. But the man who currently ranks second in all of baseball in that category hasn’t had nearly the same amount of success. That man is Conforto’s teammate, David Wright.

With the numbers Wright has put up this season, it took me off guard that he would be second. He has a .256 batting average, over 50 points lower than Conforto’s. Not to mention Wright has a higher medium hit percentage (43.1%) than Conforto (32.8%) and a lower soft hit percentage (7.8% to Conforto’s 16.4%). So what gives?

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Keep in mind, it’s still very early in the season, so the numbers are a little bit skewed. With that said, one of the reasons Wright has a similar hard hit and a higher medium hit percentage than Conforto is because he isn’t putting the ball in play nearly as much. Despite having less plate appearances, Wright has managed to walk and strikeout more than Conforto. And so far, he is doing it at a higher rate than usual, with a 16.2 walk percentage compared to his career average of 11%, and a 31.3 strikeout percentage compared to his career 18.6%. He has essentially been the right-handed Curtis Granderson.

His approach at the plate is the team’s current hitting philosophy: take pitches and make the pitcher work through an at-bat. The Mets are averaging 3.99 pitches per plate appearance (P/PA), good enough for sixth in all of baseball. They aren’t the Astros at 4.13, but they are certainly up there. The first three hitters in the Mets lineup are among the top 40 in baseball in P/PA with Granderson at 4.34, Wright with 4.22, and Conforto with 4.17.

Wright’s approach at the plate has been pretty passive, but it’s good to know that when he is putting the ball in play, he is hitting it hard. His batting average on balls in play is .375 – the second highest on the team behind only Conforto’s .381 BABIP. It’s also worth noting that he has been going to the opposite field a lot as well, with 35.3% of balls hit traveling to right field as opposed to 25.% going up the middle. This is likely due to the fact that he falls into a good amount of two strike counts and doesn’t try to do too much.

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So what can we expect from Wright for the rest of the season? Well, if he continues to take a lot of pitches and work out an at bat, we are going to see numbers similar to Granderson’s but with less home runs. That isn’t such a bad thing, but I still don’t see that strategy lasting for a full season. I would prefer to see him taking advantage of pitchers trying to get ahead early in the count, especially in the months of May and June where is career batting average is .304 and .325, respectively. Word has likely gotten out that he is taking more pitches, so I’d like to see him abandon his approach at the plate if a pitcher tries to get ahead on the first pitch with a fastball down the middle.

It will be interesting to see how the rest of the season unfolds for the Mets all-time hit leader. As long as he stays healthy, his production on the field will play a key part in dictating whether or not the Mets can keep up with the division leading Nationals.

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