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Remember David Wright? Before he went off to rest his aching shoulder, he was a hot-hitting son of a gun (as reflected in his recent Schaefer PotW win). Howard Megdal spoke to David about how he got out of that horrible slump that preceded the streak (Bobby Abreu chimed in, too). Apparently lot goes into hitting a baseball when you haven't been hitting one.
NEW YORK -- David Wright, who recently snapped the longest slump of his career, didn't feel like he was in a slump, if you only evaluated his process. "A lot of times when I go into slumps, which are inevitable, I feel very uncomfortable in the box," Wright told me in the Mets clubhouse, prior to Wednesday night's game against the Athletics. "I don't see the ball very well, I swing at a lot of pitches outside the zone. Therefore I strike out a lot.
"You know, this last time, it wasn't like that," he continued. "I felt comfortable. I wasn't getting the results that I wanted. I was having some decent at-bats, without results, so maybe I started tinkering with some things I shouldn't have, instead of just riding it out for, you know, two series, seven or eight days, just riding it out. But I think maybe by tweaking some things, changed some things I shouldn't have changed, I might have prolonged it, maybe dug myself a deeper hole."
Wright hadn't been hitting with his customary power for the Mets, but he still posted a .304/.349/.415 line through May 28. Then, from May 29 to June 16, Wright hit .130/.256/.159. The guy who started the year with a career .888 OPS saw his 2014 mark drop to .678.
His peripheral numbers back up the assertion that his process wasn't broken. Even through that awful 18-game skid, Wright still walked 11 times and struck out only 16 times in 82 plate appearances, in line with his career rates in both areas. "Right, that was one of the things I checked for," Wright said. "We have a lot of numbers guys here, so I'll check for: Am I chasing pitches outside the zone? What am I doing? And my chase rate was about normal for what it's been throughout my career. So that gave me comfort, at least, knowing I'm not getting myself out."
Still, expecting Wright to sit still in the face of poor results is probably silly. He may not be quite the same person he was in the minor leagues, when the Mets noticed he was hitting far better on the road than at home, eventually determining that Wright was tiring himself out with extra batting practice in his home park. But he's just not the patient sort, and it's fair to assume that at age 31, he never will be. It's worked out pretty well for him so far. Through age 31, Wright has the seventh-best OPS+ of any third baseman, ever (minimum 1,000 games). Of the six ahead of him, five are Hall of Famers: Eddie Mathews, Wade Boggs, Mike Schmidt, Home Run Baker and George Brett. The sixth, Chipper Jones, should join them in Cooperstown soon.
"Well, I know one thing. I know he's been in slumps throughout his career, everybody does," Mets manager Terry Collins said prior to Wednesday's game. "But he went after this one pretty hard. About three weeks ago he started. He was here early, he was in the video room constantly, comparing swings from the past to now, working in the cage, trying to get it worked out."
Wright seemed to question his own hyperactive approach to troubleshooting, and Collins endorsed it. Veteran Mets outfielder Bobby Abreu came down somewhere in the middle. "He's a hard worker," Abreu said, sitting in front of his locker. "He knows how to make adjustments. He's hit for his entire career. So it's going to be about getting back to his normal approach. He'd been making good contact, so it was just a question of, sometime soon, the balls are going to be getting down. And in St. Louis, he became the same guy we all know."
Abreu said something else that other major league hitters point out as well. There's a moment that comes before the point when the balls start falling in (or flying out of the park) when you know, as a hitter, that you've latched onto something. "You see it when things start to happen," Abreu said. "For some reason, it happens sometimes when there are runners in scoring position, and everything starts to turn around your way … You've just been working on the field, trying to do everything right. And it's just like a little click, that turns around everything." Abreu smiled as he said it.
Still, both Wright and Abreu, with 4,107 career hits between them, acknowledged that actually getting the results on the field is what makes you feel truly unburdened. "You can tell yourself all you want that the process itself is what's important," Wright said. "But if you don't get the results … this game is based around results. So I think that's the thing that gives you the confidence."
Abreu echoed this. "This is a different emotion, because everything is starting to go your way, the way you want it to be," Abreu said. "You just enjoy every single part. Every single part, you just enjoy, you just be a part of all the good things that happen to you."
For the manager, that click isn't audible. He needs to see the results to know the slump is over. "I think it just started to pay off in St. Louis," Collins said of Wright, "when he hit those balls, his bat stayed in the zone longer, hit more balls on the barrel."
For his part, Wright appreciated that Collins gave him the space to figure things out on his own. "I think sometimes, it works against you, too, if people start talking to you about this and that," Wright said. "Because, you know, you never get called into the manager's office when you're going well. You never get called to the manager's office to have him say, 'You know, you're swinging the bat really well.' So when you get called to the manager's office, it's usually something not so good. So I think Terry does a good job of giving you your distance."
Collins probably had an easier time making that call with Wright, of course, since he's hardly in need of motivation. "I think it all came from that he worked extra hard to get to that point," Collins said. "'Cause it's not easy. It's not easy. And when you're that good, you get in a slump, you're bound and determined to get out of it. And the great ones? They get out of it. They figure out a way. And he figured out a way."
Still, Wright smiled and shook his head sadly, when asked if he'd learned anything from this slump and how it ended, when it came to avoiding the next one, or even if he could help himself when it came to pushing back against the on-field results. "No. I mean, I always tell myself to just stay the course, just go with the ride," Wright said. "It's a roller coaster ride, the whole season's not going to go the way you want it to. And you always tell yourself that. But when you get in the midst of it, you want to do something proactive to get yourself out of it." |
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