Consider this dooms day Mets scenario: David Wright leaves the Mets, becomes the Phillies third baseman after next season and he again finds his power stroke in Citizens Bank Park. He’ll be 30 and in the prime of his career.
Wright’s contract is up after 2012. He gets $15 million next year. In 2013, the Mets own a $16 million option, not the kind of money you really want to spend on a “very good player. Not a superstar,” as Fred Wilpon noted of Wright.
Maybe the Phillies see Wright in a different light.
They do things differently, like winning. They beat the Mets 6-4 last night at Citi Field when first baseman Daniel Murphy let a Domonic Brown ground ball sneak by him that keyed a three-run ninth.
The Mets can give Wright $16 million in 2013 or buy out the final year for $1 million. It just so happens that Phillies third baseman Placido Polanco’s contract also ends after the 2012 season. He gets $6.25 million in 2012. The Phils may have another World Series title by then. They have a $5.5 million option for 2013, when Polanco will be 37, with a $1 million buyout.
You can be sure that Phillies officials have considered this scenario. They never considered the Mets would bungle everything in such a way, essentially not just alienating their marquee player, the kind of young, wholesome, hard-working, low-maintenance star — superstar or not — every franchise would love to have as its centerpiece.
I talked to Wright alone after he met with the media before last night’s pitiful loss. I mentioned my Phillies scenario.
“I never thought of free agency,” Wright told me. “I never thought of wearing a different uniform, but it is one of those things, I guess, where anything can happen.”
Yes, it could. The door has been opened and it has been opened by the Mets. You can be sure he is disappointed by the recent turn of events.
“I feel sorry for David Wright,” one AL superstar said recently. “He’s got to get out of there. That’s got to be an impossible place to play, and it’s so hard to hit in that ballpark.”
Noted another player, a player that speaks to Wright frequently: “David has had it over there. He’s so frustrated by that ballpark.”
And now the frustrated owner has criticized Wright. The ballpark isn’t getting any smaller and the Mets’ problems are only getting bigger. Yes, they’ve added a new minority owner, but these are the Mets — things can always get worse.
The Phillies have shown themselves to be a baseball-first, winning-first or ganization, a no-nonsense organization, while the Mets have been just the opposite. It’s amazing how the Phillies continue to do things the right way, load up on great pitching and sell out their ballpark and win close games, doing just enough to win, as they did last night.
Wright is batting .226 with six home runs and only 18 RBIs, and he is out with a stress frac ture in his lower back. His slugging per centage is .404. The last two years the Mets played at Shea Stadium, Wright posted slugging percentages of .546 and .534. In 2009, the first year of Citi Field, Wright’s slugging percentage was .447. It improved to .503 last season, but still well below the numbers Wright posted when Shea was his home.
As for these 2011 Phillies, Wright said: “Obviously, they’re as good as advertised. They’ve been able to win in different ways. They can go out there and outslug you. Or they can get that effort from every one of their starting pitchers to keep their team in the game, even when their offense is not clicking. When you get a pitching staff like that, it allows, I won’t say flaws, but it allows a lot of games when you’re not hitting that you win games that you probably should not win when your team is struggling offensively.”
As wrong as it seems, David Wright could be the perfect fit for the Phillies.