|
|
|
Last night, David Wright had two hits, including a game-tying single to left field in the fifth inning.
…it was an inspiring at bat, since, unlike in previous weeks, he shortened his swing, and muscled the ball through, instead of swinging for a five-run homer from his heels…
Following the game, Wright said:
“I’ve had my problems with runners in scoring position, but I’m glad I could come through…It’s a big at-bat for my confidence, and for the team.”
In his first few seasons, Wright was viewed as being the inexperienced, wide-eyed, innocent rookie, trying to find his way, while exceeding expectations on route to becoming the guy we hoped would be the team’s captain and face of the franchise.
However, he is no longer inexperienced. He is no longer wide-eyed, instead he is focused and serious. Thanks to last September, he is no longer innocent. He is no longer unproven, in fact he is putting up MVP statistics for the third-straight season. In short, in the view of many fans, it is time he become the captain, it is time he become the guy who sees this team through the darkness, to better days and to a championship.
Instead, though, whether accurate or not, Wright is getting a reputation among some of his team’s fans for being the ‘Alex Rodriguez of the Mets,’ i.e., a fat, cosmetic stat line, while he is nowhere to be found in the big game.
The thing is, he’s hitting .325 in September.
Yes, he is hitting .247 with two outs and runners in scoring position, and is batting just .214 in the ninth inning, but he’s also batting .310 when the game is tied and is batting .315 when the game is within one run.
Wright is also batting .288 this season in 73 at bats against the Phillies, and .371 against the Marlins.
I believe there are clutch situations, but it is virtually impossible to define clutch in any one statistic.
That said, it is impossible to ignore the language being directed towards Wright, regardless of his stats.
To me, when facts are ignored for the sake of emotion, it suggests that people are pulling from an existing narrative they believe is in place. For Wright, his perceived narrative may be a player stuck between that wide-eyed, innocent rookie, and the MVP captain his fans expect him to already be – regardless of whether he is or isn’t.
Last night, however, is what I and other fans like to see. I mean no disrespect to Carlos Beltran, Carlos Delgado or Ryan Church, but I sense a different level of excitement and confidence from fans when Wright and Reyes are leading this team. We want them to be ‘The Guys,’ and I hope last night was the turning point towards realizing their leadership.
 |
 |
 |
RSS 2.0 You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
Very well stated!!
it suggests that people are pulling from an existing narrative they believe is in place. For Wright, his perceived narrative may be a player stuck between that wide-eyed, innocent rookie, and the MVP captain his fans expect him to already be – regardless of whether he is or isn’t.
It’s a good sentiment; but it’s actually very poorly stated; but I’ll take sensible, coherent, and syntactically atrocious from Cerrone any day of the week.
Perhaps this is a better way to put it:
It makes no sense that Wright would be a choker in the 9th inning and have guts in late and close situations in general. These discrepancies in clutch stats point to the conclusion that 80% of “clutch”–a generous estimate–is the result of random variance among small sample sizes and preconceived narratives that fans reinforce by the application of selective memory. Fans get caught up in simple narratives that they can easily understand–heroes and zeroes, that sort of thing–and lose sight of the fact that reality rarely if ever conforms to simple narratives, because discerning narratives from reality is much harder than constructing them from fantasy. It is possible that fans’ narrative for Wright is in a state of flux, and that his performance from here on out will result in a shift of narrative. One can only hope that the new one will be more nuanced and “reality based” than the various old ones.
I’ll be honest my expectations for Wright and Reyes are higher because they came from within, but when push comes to shove I don’t care if it is Ramon Castro or Endy Chavez as long as when the hit is needed it is delivered.
With 5 games to go, I lack time for any sense of connection to anyone who fails.
I disagree….. Unless an injury is obviously plaguing a player my expectations are strictly depending on their respective salaries. Beltran and Delgado for much of the season are huge underachievers. Reyes and Wright are earning their money…….
I’ve been reading this blog for over 2 years and that may be the best post I’ve read from you, Cerrone.
Insightful and well-crafted, sir. Good job.
Agreed. It was posts like that got me hooked on Metsblog 4 years ago.
Very well put…
I could not have said that better. Amazing post and spot on! I am sick of people getting on either Wright or Reyes. Baseball is a game of ups and downs. We are lucky to have both of these guys on our team. Our guys (it gives me the chills writing that) are in the top 5 in the league in so many offensive categories. Damn bullpen though..haha.
Off topic, but I am going to be in Washington DC this weekend with my girlfriend. I want to kill myself..haha. Does anybody know of any Mets friendly bars where I may be able to catch the game on Saturday and/or Sunday? Please help. I have the slingbox, but would love to just watch it on TV. Someone help!!!
Try Porter’s Dinning Saloon near Dupont Circle (1207 19th St NW). If by some strange chance they don’t have the game on just ask.
Thank you, I will be in that area!
You won’t get the Saturday game out of town since it is a 1:00 start. It is blacked out in non-NY markets unless it is on FOX. It is possible that the gametime has been changed since January (that’s the schedule I’m off of), but if it’s a 1:00 game, you won’t get it. I’ve lived in Baltimore with the Extra Innings package for a few years and it is the most frustrating thing having a game blacked out. I missed the Maine game against Florida last year for this very reason.
who is the current team captain?
no one…most baseball teams don’t have them. as a matter of fact the only 2 captains i can think of are Jeter and Veritek.
Wasn’t Carter the last Mets captain (possibly sharing it with Mex)?
John Franco was the last Mets Captain. Carter did share it with Mex back in the 80’s.
If I am not mistaken, Keith Hernandez was the Team Captain all by himself.
Gary Carter was never Team Captain.
Carter was co cap in 88 and 89. Look it up.
John Franco was the last captain.
If/when Wright becomes captain, I hope he doesn’t wear a “C” on his jersey. I really don’t like it.
I would rather have Wright on our team than A-Rod any day!! Wright is a home grown young player and A-Rod is an “old” hired gun, it’s that simple. I don;t think DW would walk away from 252 million and then come back and say I didnt mean it. A-Rod is a cancer and the Yankees will never win with him on the team. He has always been a big fish in a small pond, with the Rangers and Mariners. He could pad his numbers in meanigless games and now that he is in the spot light he is gone. DW is the new face of the METS and will be here for years to come as will Jose. Good things will happen to the METS with these guys.
Well put. The best move the Mets ever made was NOT signing A-Rod!
Excellent post. I understand where some frustrated fans might want to make this comparison to No-Rod - however lets give the man a chance. Right he’s well on his way to becoming the greatest Met position player ever developed by the organization and has a potential Hall of Fame career in the works.He’s only been in one post-season. I think he needs to catch up quite a bit to reach the level of choking infamy that No-Rod has achieved.
ARod is irritating, but any team will be better positioned to win with him in his prime than without him.
The only question is whether his value on the field is worth putting up with his salary demands and his obnoxiousness, which makes the team less flexible and less fun to root for, respectively.
I put a high premium of whether a team is fun to root for, so I would say no–particularly when we have someone on pace for a Hall of Fame career playing his position. You don’t want to mess with that.
Some people were pushing for getting ARod’s declining phase and his 200M contract and trading Wright’s full prime and his 40ish million. This was so berzerk (even in pure baseball terms–to say nothing about the spirit of a team and sports in general) that it made me think of suggesting to Cerrone that Metsblog posters should be subject to drug tests.
I don’t understand what you mean by “when facts are ignored for the sake of emotion”. Anybody who watched every Met game during a good portion of the summer knows that Wright was not the guy you wanted up there in a clutch situation, because you would either get a nice rally killing DP or a strikeout on a breaking ball away.
I like Wright as much as the next guy, and I am happy that he is hitting in September. Maybe I got spoiled by what he did in 2006 and 2007. But Wright this year seemed like a totally different hitter than in years past, moving more toward trying to be a slugger than a guy who hits for a high average.
So my post got eaten. but anyway his late and close, which I as-sume is “clutch”, ops is .904. That would tell me he probably is coming through in “clutch” situations a lot more often than fans seem to give him credit for.
That’s not what my television set was showing me over the summer. And I am not a stat monster, so I am only going by what my eyes were telling me. Sorry.
Like I said, he will finish with a nice line. But it’s sad when I can remember Fernando Tatis coming up with more clutch hits than David Wright.
thats because tatis has a lot fewer at bats, so his percentage of clutch hits is higher. i’ve probably missed 10 games all season on sny and wright has had tons of huge hits. sure hes had bad at bats in clutch situations also, but no one is perfect. some people are far too spoiled. people would kill for a wright or a reyes or a beltran on their team…
Maybe you need a better television set/memory? I mean if I said my television set was saying Luis Castillo was the best player on our team does that suddenly make it true.
I think the problem is the times he doesn’t come through weigh a lot more on fans minds than the times he does so it makes it seem like he’s constantly choking. Plus unlike Tatis, David takes a lot of walks in these situations, obviously Tatis’s two or three homers are going to stick out more than David’s 7 or 8 walks. That doesn’t mean it’s true that David isn’t clutch because you remember it that way though.
But cyclone, this is precisely why we track things with stats instead of our eyes/memory. What you (and by you I mean all of us) remember and what actually happened are often not the same thing…
For most people, once you’ve made the as-sertion that someone is clutch or not, it becomes self fulfilling. To say someone is clutch is so complicated it becomes as-signed arbitrarily.
Lets pretend Howard and Wright have identical number up until September. Let’s also say that 50% of Wrights RBIs came with the game late and close or with 2 outs. Howard got 25% in similar situations but score 20 more runs.
Then in September, Howard’s OPS is .150 higher than Wright, but David tallies 15 more RBIs. (I could make this more convoluted but I’ll end it here)
Who is more clutch?
While there is no good empirical measure of “clutch”, the term becomes meaninglessly as-signed based on a combination of fans experience/expectations and sports analysts’ conjecture.
First to Gina - My memory and television set work fine, thanks. And I saw enough games with Wright at the plate in situations where he could have changed the game to know that he was abysmal over the summer. There were times he couldn’t even hit a sac fly with a runner on third and less then two outs.
As far as clutch and what is the measure of it, I’m not necessarily saying close and late. Like someone stated below, in situtations earlier in the game where a hit or sac fly could have gotten a tying or go ahead run in with less than two out and he failed to do so.
cyclone is not off base to say that Wright’s season has been a disappointment - he has so many rbi because he has had more at bats with risp than any othtr player in mlb. So, when cyclon tells him his eyes let him know that Wright has not been as good as in the past, he is correct. If Wright took better advantage of his rbi opportunities, he would be having a monster rbi season, and be a runaway MVP winner. Since he hasn’t done that Reyes, Pujols, Howard, et al. are in the MVP race.
Listening to SNY telecasts, Keith Hernandez has remarked over and over that no matter what Wright’s numbers this season, it has been a disappointment. If Wright had hit like he has the last 2 weeks over the season (and I know that he can’t be this hot all season, but say .315 average), he would be having a season for the ages.
The Mets would not be in the spot they are without Wright, but a little more from him this season paired with the production from the firm of Carlos y Carlos, would probably have them in first by a game or two.
Last season, the Mets were in first at this point on the strength of Wright; this year, they are worse off despite the improved production from Delgado, especially, because Wright has not been as good as he was last season.
David Wright has had his share of hits in big spots, and has carried the Mets to enough wins over these last few years that any question of his “clutch” status should have been put to rest long ago.
Wright’s struggles this summer were simply the ruts that every hitter goes through from time to time, and have no bearing whatsoever on his ability to produce in big spots.
Any numbers that the amateur statisticians trot out to support an argument that Wright wilts under pressure are purely circumstantial, not generally indicative of his history, and simply not convincing. Sorry.
YOU GO !!! David is the MAn and he has proven it again and again in the past. No player is clutch in every game and all the time. Look at Jeter, is he clutch? I would take DW over anybody.
I never said anything about Wright’s performance from 2006-2007. But I don’t live in the past, and I was merely speaking about his 2008 alone.
Don’t get me wrong, I do not dislike Wright, and I wouldn’t trade him for anybody in the world, not even Pujols. But there has been something about him this year that just seems off, despite the great numbers he has put up.
But there were also times when he hit a homer with a runner on third and less than two outs. I said it above, it’s self-fulfilling. You remember what you want to to reinforce your beliefs.
Let me give an example:
You’re driving home in traffic and someone in front of you can’t merge (or doesn’t signal or cuts you off…etc.). You speed by them to display a certain hand gesture (maybe that’s just me) and notice they’re ____(insert any race you want).
Now I’m sure that you encounter plenty of very good ____(whatever you’ve chosen) drivers, but you’ve already decided that they’re all terrible so you discount the good ones as anomalies. You don’t scientifically track the number of good vs. bad, you just “remember” that they’re all bad.
Once you’ve decided that Wright is or isn’t clutch, you discard the data that conflicts with what your personal feelings on the matter are. This is precisely why there has been such a movement in stats lately. Stats are better at measuring whether a player is good or bad than your memory is.
I’m sure he has hit a homer with a runner on 3rd and less than two outs this season. Unfortunately, the Mets were probably already hopelessly out of the game at that point for his homer to make a difference. Like the homer he hit the other night against the Cubs.
See, we can play this game forever.