THE judicious approach would have been for the Mets to wait a few days and actually check to see whether David Wright was still suffering from post-concussion symptoms in the wake of the brain injury he sustained on Saturday when he was hit above the left ear flap of his helmet with a Matt Cain 94 mph fastball.
TONIGHT’S PREVIEW: Giants at Mets
Instead, the Mets rushed to judgment and placed Wright on the 15-day DL sometime during yesterday’s walk-off 3-2 victory over the Giants. Somehow, it took less than 24 hours for the club physicians and a concussion specialist the organization refused to identify by name or affiliation, and who did not examine the patient, to reach the decision that Wright would be too damaged to play until next month.
How convenient a result for the organization that awakened yesterday to pleas and demands from much of the baseball press to either immediately place Wright on the DL or, beyond that, send him home for the rest of the season.
How convenient a collaborative outcome for an ownership group that fears nothing more than bad publicity.
The contention here is that the Mets did not so much rush to judgment as they allowed themselves to be stampeded into judgment by a handful of writers ignorant in the field of concussions. The contention here is that the Mets once again were more concerned with PR spin than in taking a common-sense approach that might have proved unpopular.
The Mets can’t really go wrong here and Wright can not be harmed here by the knee-jerk approach adopted by the organization and announced after the game by GM Omar Minaya. The rest will probably do him good, but then a two-week rest at this time of the season would do any ballplayer good.
This was a decision made about Wright, perhaps to protect Wright, but almost certainly also made to protect the organization from criticism. This was a reflex decision reached within the context of last season’s horribly misguided response to the concussion suffered by Ryan Church, whom the Mets allowed to fly cross-country and play immediately after the injury.
Poor Church, traded last month to the Braves for Jeff Francoeur; poor Church, who before the game was all but blamed for his own plight by Jerry Manuel.
“With Church, it was, ‘I want to play, but,’ ” the manager said. “It was, ‘I want to play, but I’m queasy.’ It was just always stuff coming out of left field.”
But if Church said, “I want to play, but,” he no doubt was telling the Mets what they wanted to hear even while they refused to listen to his disclaimer. Translated, Church’s “I want to play, but,” means, “I know you want me to play and think I should play, so I will play even though I don’t feel well enough to play.”
The most famous beaning in Mets’ history took place at Yankee Stadium on July 8, 2000, when Mike Piazza took one upside the head from Roger Clemens. Piazza returned to the lineup five days later on July 13 after missing the All-Star Game and one Mets game. He suffered no recurring problems.
Five days for Piazza, but then the Mets didn’t have the press demanding within hours of the incident that he be placed on the DL for the remainder of the season.
Piazza was hit in the head by a pitch another time as a Met, that on Sept. 10, 2005, by the Cardinals’ Julian Tavarez. This time the catcher returned four days later. Again, he suffered no after-effects.
It’s our belief that while Wright deserves protection from the organization that goes beyond Johan Santana’s attempted retaliation on Saturday, he is more deserving of professionally applied medical protocols than of a knee-jerk stampede to judgment that serves the organization’s purposes.
The Mets took the safe and popular route here. They may even have done the right thing. But it is almost impossible to believe that they did it for the right reason.