The news hit, David Wright said, “like a sledgehammer.”
That would be the news regarding Matt Harvey, the news that arrived Monday, the news that sent a shiver down the spines of everyone who’d begun to invest themselves in what the Mets are, and where they’re going.
The news that still casts a pall at Citi Field, even on a day when they battered the Phillies, 11-3, a day when Harvey was supposed to pitch (and, wouldn’t you know it, a Harvey Day — minus Harvey — when the Mets finally removed their bats from the freezer).
“He’s in good spirits,” reported Wright, the captain who has been absent for more than three weeks with his own depressing injury, a strained hamstring that has kept him away from the team and the season and has spent the past few days logging rehab hours alongside his young teammate.
Wright was in good spirits as well, yesterday anyway. It’s funny: when he decided to cast his lot with the Mets last winter, signing the richest contract in team history, it was assumed the team hadn’t merely locked up a significant piece of its long-term puzzle; it was assumed they’d also cast in granite the face of the franchise for years to come.
Only by the time summer rolled around, it was Harvey in whom so much had suddenly become invested. It was Harvey whose staggering talent drew attention to the team in the middle of another rebuilding season, Harvey who got the big magazine profiles. And it was the clock attached to Harvey that suddenly seemed to matter most — get a legit team around him, and quick, before he could put himself on the market.
Now, the clock for Harvey will be measured in either two ways: the time he spends away from the team if he decides to have Tommy John surgery. Or the one that will seem to echo like a nightmare if he decides not to, the one melded to the UCL that will tick every time he throws a pitch in anger.
And the clock that really matters again is this one: the one belonging to David Wright, who has already seen five full seasons of his prime get tossed into a paper shredder. There was a time when we believed — when Wright himself had to believe — he would be the Mets’ version of Derek Jeter, the foundation for teams that would be regular autumnal players. For three years — 2006, ’07, ’08 — that is exactly how it played out, even if each year ended in more gut-wrenching fashion than the one before.
And for the last five?
Well, heartbreak has probably never sounded so seductive.
“He knows we’re close,” Mets manager Terry Collins said about Wright, with whom he has developed a very close professional relationship. “And he’s excited about it.”
That remains the company line, and has to be, because the Mets made Wright certain promises besides handing him a bucket of money last winter when he agreed to stay aboard, and that included insight into Sandy Alderson’s plan to drag the Mets back to relevance by next year.
And Wright — smartly, it says here — wasn’t shy about reminding the Mets about that pledge yesterday.
“With the money we have coming off the books this year, I expect us to go out there and make this team better whether it’s through free agency, whether it’s through trades,” Wright said yesterday, before hopping a plane to continue rehabbing his balky hammy in Port St. Lucie, Fla.
“I still believe in the vision that Sandy has and although for the time being this looks like a step backwards it gives other young pitchers opportunities to kind of step up and show what they have for the rest of this year. And hopefully Matt’s back next year but if not, I’m still confident in the plan.”
That isn’t subtle, and it serves Wright well not to be even a little subtle. A captain’s job description doesn’t include player acquisition — that’s still Alderson’s purview, and Fred Wilpon’s — but it is right for Wright to remind his bosses he agreed to an extended tour of purgatory because he was also promised a glimpse of heaven.
And by heaven, nobody is referring to Port St. Lucie.