David Wright was a puzzling case to me heading into this season from a fantasy perspective. I couldn't figure out if I should be a buyer, even at a mildly discounted price (once you go 30/30, there is no such thing as a legit buy-low when drafting). After doing some DD, I ended up owning zero shares of him and I'm glad I do. I'll point out I have nothing against the guy, he seems like a really solid person but he has some disturbing trends to say the least.
The Incident
On August 15, 2009, David Wright was up to bat in the fourth inning of a 0-0 game. Matt Cain quickly worked the count to 0-2 which meant Wright was on his heels, looking for some type of breaking pitch to get the strikeout but being ready for Cain's mid-90s heater. The pitch came and Wright had no time to react as a 94-mph fastball came towards his head. Wright temporarily lay on the ground motionless after the pitch hit him squarely in the helmet. At first Cain approached him, stopped halfway and then crouched with his head bowed down. Wright eventually got to his feet, made it to the dugout and was taken to the hospital for a CT scan which came back negative. He was later diagnosed with a concussion. Cain and teammates would later go on to claim the beaning was unintentional (he did have a 0-2 count) although only seven of his first 35 pitches were balls. At the time of the incident, Wright was enjoying a solid season for the Mets. He only had eight home runs but was hitting .324 at the plate. After the beaning he went on to hit 26-for-109 (.238) with two home runs and 35 strikeouts (32.1|PERCENT|) the rest of the season.
Citi Field
Wright was criticized for his lack of power last year, many citing the new Citi Field as the culprit. While his 2009 home/away home run splits were even at five, he hit 11 more doubles and 22 more RBI on the road. This year he's hit eight home runs, seven have come on the road while he's only hit one at home. So maybe Citi Field has something to do with his power outage but the park can't be blamed for his strikeouts and poor batting average this season.
The Strikeouts
Wright enters Saturday's game batting .250 with 63 strikeouts over 172 at-bats. This means Wright has struck out 36.6|PERCENT| of the time he bats which is on pace to be a career-high by over 10|PERCENT|. So why all the strikeouts suddenly in his career? Until last season, he consistently held his strikeouts to less than 20|PERCENT|. One of the problems is his batting eye. This year Wright has an O-Swing |PERCENT| of 28.3|PERCENT| which means that he's swinging at 28.3|PERCENT| of pitches thrown to him outside of the strike zone. This is an important number since this is usually where a pitcher's "out" pitch ends up - a curve, slider, cutter, whatever, leading to a strikeout. The 28.3|PERCENT| is almost 7|PERCENT| higher than his career-high which could explain the extra punch-outs. Add in that's his O-Contact|PERCENT| (making contact on pitches swung at outside the strike zone) has dropped for the fourth consecutive year (66.2|PERCENT|, 64.8|PERCENT|, 61.0|PERCENT| and 56.9|PERCENT|) and you've got a recipe for striking out a lot.
BABIP
For many people BABIP can seem as foreign as one of Einstein's mathematical formulas. It's really quite simple. Batting Average Balls In Play (BABIP) is a player's batting average when he hits the ball in play and does not include walks, strikeouts or home runs. This is one of the new, trendy stats to quote because it can measure if a player is getting lucky or unlucky with his hits which can be a future indicator of batting average trends. Notice the use of "can" in the last sentence. This stat can be misused without giving proper justification. To start, there needs to be some kind of baseline established so that we know what a player's average BABIP is. In 2001 a rookie had a .369 BABIP (and a .350 batting average) which is incredibly high. It would be easy to predict in his sophomore year he'd see a sharp decline in batting average because his BABIP would surely drop, right? His BABIP did mildly declined to .344 (a .321 batting average) but he went on to post four years of BABIP higher than the rookie .364 (.399, .389, .384 and .376). This "rookie" was Ichiro Suzuki. The point here is that you need some type of baseline to use as a future indicator of BABIP and thus, batting average. Ichiro is a rare case where his initial BABIP was off the charts and that was pretty close to what it actually was. Then you have the polar opposite in Chris Coghlan. His rookie BABIP was .365 which led to a .321 batting average. This year he's posted a .275 BABIP which has translated to a .220 batting average. So what is Coghlan's real BABIP? We won't know for a few years but it probably isn't as bad as .275 and isn't as good as .365.
There are also cases where we have a baseline and other dynamics surrounding the player that affect what their BABIP is. In 2009 Carlos Pena hit .221 with a .250 BABIP. With a career BABIP of .284, many called his batting average unlucky and predicted him back into the .250-.270 range this season. What many people didn't realize is that opposing teams started deploying a massive shift when he came to bat which has likely resulted in the low BABIP. The results this season have been worse so to this point. Pena has a .201 BABIP and a correlating .181 batting average. There are so many other factors when looking at a player's stats – not just BABIP – that need to be taken into account. Carlos Silva claims he is pitching better because his mother is stateside and Magglio Ordonez can concentrate on hitting now that his wife's cancer scare is through. There really isn't too much of a way to predict or factor in these intangible occurrences.
Back to David Wright. He's a guy with whom BABIP can be used and here's why. Wright led all regular players last year with a .394 BABIP, which really can be attributed to luck. While Wright has worked on his approach at the plate (going more to the opposite field, appears to have more of an uppercut to his swing, neither of which I'm sure is working) he still hits the same kind of balls. Wright sports a lifetime BABIP of .344, 60 points lower than his 2009 season. Yet in 2009, he hit the same type of balls he has hit is his short career. Here are the hit type percentages from 2007-2009:
LD|PERCENT|-23.2|PERCENT|, 25.6|PERCENT|, 25.7|PERCENT|
GB|PERCENT|-39.3|PERCENT|, 36.2|PERCENT|, 38.4|PERCENT|
FB|PERCENT|-37.5|PERCENT|, 38.2|PERCENT|, 35.9|PERCENT|
Nothing has significantly changed, most notably his line drive rate. Typically a solid line drive rate like this parlays into a solid batting average, which Wright has had during this time - .325, .302 and .307. However, the .307 mark from last year is much higher than it actually should be given the rise in strikeouts. His "lucky" .394 BABIP masked his strikeouts leading fantasy owners to believe they were in store for another .300+ season, which now doesn't appear likely. Given that it was almost certain his .394 BABIP would drop I thought he wouldn't sniff .300 and with lingering questions from his power outage, (as previously mentioned) I stayed away from Wright completely this year in my fantasy circles.
If the strikeouts continue, Wright will end up south of the .275 range this year for his batting average. While Citi Field is not his only enemy the park doesn't exactly help his situation any. Wright is going to have to figure out why he's striking out so much; is this still a hangover from the beaning? Is something wrong with his vision or is he hiding an injury? Whatever it is, the Mets need to figure it out and fast, he's only 27 and should be an All-Star caliber player at the hot corner for at least four or five more years.