A rainy afternoon in Flushing ruined David Wright’s comeback plan Friday.
The Mets third baseman arrived at Citi Field believing he could play his first game in eight days, but a downpour scuttled the rigorous workout the team had planned for Wright that would determine if his left shoulder has healed.
Wright, who is recovering from a bruised rotator cuff, will have another opportunity on Saturday to show he’s ready. Before he plays, the Mets want Wright fielding grounders and throwing, ensuring he has full range of motion with the shoulder. On Friday, he hit indoors, ran and played catch and said the shoulder is “worlds” better than it was last week.
“I am feeling very optimistic about how I have recovered in a relatively short amount of time,” Wright said before the Mets beat the Rangers 6-5.
Eric Campbell remained at third base in Wright’s absence, as the Mets played a seventh straight game shorthanded. But manager Terry Collins said the team may have to make a disabled-list move if Wright isn’t ready on Saturday.
Wright said he has no regrets about avoiding the disabled list to this point.
“The DL is still 15 days, right?” Wright said. “I don’t make those decisions. It’s something where I want to play. I don’t want to get DL’ed. So if I miss eight days, I feel terrible. The team hasn’t played all that well and obviously they are playing a man down, so I feel terrible about that. But I don’t make those decisions.”
If Wright is ultimately placed on the DL, his stay would be backdated to June 27, allowing him to return next weekend. With that in mind, Collins didn’t expect to have Wright available as a pinch hitter Friday night.
Wright has previously attempted to play through injuries and sometimes worsened matters — last year he missed six weeks near the end of the season with a hamstring strain — but said he has been monitored closely.
“The medical staff has done a good job of slowing me down because I wanted to play [Friday],” Wright said. “They slowed me down, and I got the MRI [June 28] and reasonably I had hoped to meet the team in Atlanta. They slowed me down after that. Then I would have liked to be in the lineup [Friday] and they slowed me down from that “I have knowledgeable people in my corner that are holding the reins on me a little bit, making sure that I don’t do something. That’s the whole part of this whole thing. You don’t want to injure something more and be more susceptible to injury.”
Wright jammed the shoulder on a head-first dive into second base on June 12, but said the injury didn’t inhibit him until two weeks later. He aggravated the injury on two defensive plays against the Pirates on June 26.