After David Wright was brushed back Monday afternoon by the Cardinals’ Eduardo Sanchez, the New York Post’s Kevin Kernan opines the Mets’ 3B is still haunted by a beaning suffered at the hands of SF’s Matt Cain last August (“he knew at some point this spring an opposing pitcher would fire a pitch around his head to see how he reacted”).
We all remember when Wright took that terrible fastball to the helmet from the Giants’ Matt Cain on Aug. 15. It was the most frightening moment of the Mets’ season. To Wright’s credit, he was soon back in action. It was important to get back in the box as quickly as possible. The day he was beaned, he was batting .324. When he came back Sept. 1, he hit .239 the rest of the way.
Major League players can be a cruel bunch and you know Wright will be tested just as he was tested on Monday by the Cardinals. Wright will be knocked down. Then they will throw curveballs that start shoulder high, just to see if he flinches.
They want to take him out of his game; they want him to over-think and over-swing just as he did Monday. Wright is going to have to take care of business the only way that counts in baseball.
When you fall from 33 to 10 home runs, you draw a line in the sand.
On the other hand, Wright’s power numbers through August 15 were nothing to crow about, either. Kernan can draw whatever conclusions he wants from a month’s worth of garbage time baseball, but there’s a few players (including, perhaps, a couple of Wright’s teammates) who’d have begun their autumn vacations early under similar circumstances.