David Wright? He's Okay

The Mets defeated the Cincinnati Reds this afternoon by the final score of 9-4, erasing an early four-run deficit to win their 21st game of the season - their 12th comeback victory of the young season.  David Wright gave the Mets the lead with a long double in the bottom of the eighth, scoring Rob Johnson all the way from first base.

For the game, Wright reached base five times, doubling twice and drawing three bases on balls.  His batting average now stands at .411 and his on-base percentage is at .513.  Both numbers lead the majors.  No Met with enough at-bats to qualify for the batting lead had ever owned a .400 batting average this late in the season.  No Met until David Wright.

Let's put what Wright has done into perspective.  If he gets four plate appearances in a game and gets two hits, his on-base percentage will actually go down.  But that's just for one game.  We need to look at a bigger picture here.

If David Wright collects 32 hits over his next 110 at-bats (a .291 average over a month's worth of at-bats), his batting average for the season will still be at .355, or one point higher than John Olerud's franchise-best .354 average, a mark he set in 1998.

David Wright has reached base 78 times over his first 35 games, an average of 2.23 times on base per game.  If Wright plays in every game from now until the end of the season, he will play in 159 games (he missed three games in April).  John Olerud currently is the only Met to reach base 300 times in a single season, doing so 309 times in 1999.  For Wright to break Olerud's mark, he would only have to reach base 1.78 times per game from now until the end of the season.  Wright has already had two full seasons averaging over 1.78 times on base per game, with a 1.85 TOB/game ratio in 2007 and a 1.79 TOB/game ration in 2008.

Finally, the Cardinals' Rafael Furcal is currently second in the National League with a .367 average.  That's 44 points behind Wright's league-leading .411 mark.  At no point last season did Jose Reyes have a lead as large as 44 points on his way to becoming the first Met to win a batting title.

What's the point of this piece?  That should be obvious.  David Wright is having an okay season.  And I mean "okay" the way Wayne Gretzky was an okay goal scorer and Rickey Henderson was an okay base stealer.  On that note, here's hoping David Wright continues to be okay with the Mets for a long, long time.