MLB

Wright not looking to jump ship from Mets

PORT ST. LUCIE — This was late last year when David Wright had the haggard appearance of a hostage rather than a baseball player. A time when I thought he might start blinking Morse code in his next TV interview as a way to transmit, “Don’t believe my words; get me out of here.”

We were talking at his locker at Citi Field, and this is probably a good moment to mention I respect Wright. How he prepares. How he cares.

I wondered if he was getting polluted by life in the Mets world. Not just the soul-sapping losing, but the culture of a franchise that seemed run by a tin ear, delusion and an inferiority complex rather than reasoned decision-making; a culture that had bled into the clubhouse, creating an atmosphere not conducive to winning. My thought was that because this is all he had known, he just might be losing the ability to know that this was not proper.

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I told him it would be great to give him a two-week furlough to, say, the Yankees or Red Sox clubhouse. Just so he could see how different the professionalism and preparation was. How the confidence, the sense of winning was so different from what he was experiencing.

Wright was engaged, wanting to know more about how those clubhouses operated. But when I asked him if he wanted off the island, he shook his head to indicate no.

It is Wright — not a guy in a big baseball head — who is Mr. Met. The team is in his blood. He grew up a Mets fan with the Triple-A affiliate so close to his Virginia home. He was drafted and developed by the organization. He has risen to be the unofficial captain. A role that comes with the burden of having to explain so much of the inexplicable day after day the past few years.

And then there was yet another winter of Mets discontent; an offseason of money not spent, of ownership facing legal and financial peril. In recent years we have seen such star-level players as Roy Halladay and Zack Greinke ask out of bad situations to try to win before their professional hour glass ran out. Could Mr. Met do the same?

“I can’t imagine ever asking out,” Wright said. “It would feel like I was jumping ship. I want to be part of the solution. That [requesting a trade] seems like the easy way out. As much as I want to win, there has to be loyalty, too. It would be very easy to go in there and ask out when the going gets tough.”

Wright is 28 now, a year older than Greinke, but still in his prime. Terry Collins is his fourth manager since arriving in the majors in 2004. Sandy Alderson is the fourth general manager since Wright was drafted a decade ago. The sales job now is that there are new Mets sheriffs bringing order and logic to what has been the home of baseball irrationality.

Nevertheless, it is hard to find an outside baseball man — rival executive, scout — who views the 2011 Mets as serious contenders. So the likelihood is another year of Wright’s prime will tick by at a time when the instability of the current ownership does not portend well for the near future of this franchise. Assuming his 2013 option is picked up, Wright cannot exit (without a trade) until he is 31 — until perhaps his best years are almost completely gone.

Maybe the Mets under Alderson revive; use their money more wisely, stop forcing injured players onto the field, stop living in a world in which firing a manager at 3 a.m. Eastern makes sense. There is no certainty the grass will be greener elsewhere, but I do wonder if Wright aches to find out as each new dollop of misery hits the Mets.

“To me [leaving] is not a decision I want to make,” Wright said. “In a perfect world, we get things turned around, we start winning and the decision is made easy for me. There is no question I want to win. But just as important is I want to win here.

“I am a loyal person and I feel loyal to this ownership group because it has been good to me,” he said. “You have the good, the bad and the ugly. We certainly have had the bad and the ugly. So now I want to be part of the good. I enjoy the challenge. I want to believe that I will endure the bad times for a prize at the end.”

joel.sherman@nypost.com