Comments on: David Wright’s Power Outage Part 2

By: NEPP

NEPP — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 03:04:11 +0000

Its not Citi Field. Its not as if Shea was this amazing hitters park:

Park Factor for Citi and Shea (last 5 years)

2009 – 98
2008 – 99
2007 – 98
2006 – 98
2005 – 98

Shea wasn’t a HR hitters park any more than Citi is. The main reason the Mets didn’t hit many HRs was that they were throwing a AAA lineup out there for more than half the season due to injuries. Besides which, they weren’t a HR hitting team even as constructed on Opening Day.

Wright having an off year with the rest of that crap going on is hardly unexpected.

By: NEPP

NEPP — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 03:00:29 +0000

I’ve thought about it, massaged the numbers, looked at countless hours of footage in an attempt to find the true answer as to Wright’s disturbing dropoff. After all that, I think I have a good educated guess as to the issue:

Answer: It was a complete and utter fluke year for him where a lot of things went wrong. He’s a superstar player, one of the top 30 positional players in the game and he’ll be a perennial AS 3B for years to come. Sometimes guys have off years and its nothing more than that. Its not as if he fell off the face of the earth, he still posted a 120 OPS+ season at Age 26. He’s just now about to enter his prime and he’s already on a HOF trajectory. I won’t be surprised at all if he has an OPS+ above 150 in 2010.

As a Phillies fan, I grimace at the thought of my team facing him for the next decade.

By: willmose

willmose — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 02:30:22 +0000

Dave can you break it down pre- and post-concusion? I think that might tell the whole story.

By: jimbo

jimbo — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 01:15:24 +0000

So knee and groin issues that affected his swing, but not his ability to steal bases. Dunno, but that sounds like a contradiction to me. I’m buying the angle that the new park robbed him of some HR, and he overcompensated leading to the overall outage.

Living in San Diego for a while, I remember how much Ryan Klesko despised the new park in 2004. And that was coming from Qualcomm–not exactly a bandbox. Here are his stats preceding Petco, year opened (04), and year after. Broke it down by home/road, with slash of HR/At bats/SLG%.

2003 home: 8/186/.409; road: 13/211/.498
2004 home: 3/212/.420; road: 6/190/.479
2005 home: 10/208/.438; road: 8/235/.400

Okay, so not an ideal comp to Wright in skill/age, but pretty interesting that in 2004 his home HR decline also came with a 50% drop in road HR.

Even being a year deeper into his 30’s, he did apparently adjust in 2005…to the point he actually slugged better at home.

By: LGNYM

LGNYM — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 00:38:56 +0000

Yeah I do remember Jerry mentioning that on a few occasions around the time Wright went on the DL with the concussion. I think he said Wright had been playing through knee and groin injuries for awhile. Something like that could conceivably have an effect on performance, but you would think that if it was effecting him THAT much to the point where he was striking out like crazy and lost almost all his power, we would have heard more about it and/or the Mets would have shut him down at somepoint since the season was going nowhere.

So I don’t know if that is the answer either. What a weird season.

By: jimbo

jimbo — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 16:03:02 +0000

Maybe a wrist or something? Can’t imagine what sort of injury would ruin his power stroke but still allow him to steal so many bases. I did see some comments about how he was flinching after the concussion. Happened too late to explain the low homer total though.

So perplexing.

By: FireJerryManuelToo

FireJerryManuelToo — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 13:02:56 +0000

This is all assuming Dub was healthy in the first place. The (inept) manager made several allusions throughout the year to suggest he wasn’t.

By: MPC

MPC — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 21:37:50 +0000

I can’t remember where, but I’m pretty sure Wright was quoted as saying that he was working with Howard Johnson on changing his approach to try to hit more line drives because of the new dimensions.

By: Wrighteous

Wrighteous — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 21:36:22 +0000

Obviously he’s off the juice.

/head explodes

By: jimbo

jimbo — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 20:41:26 +0000

I wonder if he was trying to do to much (new stadium, dwindling support).

Comparing his situational stats from 07/08 vs 09, his BB/K with runners on base fell from .95 to .42 (.99 to .38 with RISP); without runners on base it dropped from .73 to .57. Still a significant decline with nobody on base, but much less severe than with runners on.

I just have a very difficult time thinking his abilities fell off the map after so much consistent production. Despite the “age 27″ thing, does it matter how much time a player has before hitting their prime age? Meaning, if someone breaks in at age 20 vs 25, does the 20 year old get worn down faster with the added demands of so many full seasons?