What's Wrong with Wright?

Mets fans are going nuts over David Wright’s power outage last year and the Mets are even shortening the fence blaming his decline from 33 homers in 2008 at Shea to 10 at CitiField on the size of the ballpark. But what they fail to point out is that Wright also hit 5 homers in 277 at bats on the road in 2009 – compared to 12 in 325 in 2008. That’s not as big a drop-off as we saw in his home numbers (from 21 in 301 to 5 in 258) but neither number is satisfactorily explained by the change in CitiField.

ESPN’s baseball genius Rob Neyer examines the David Wright home run conundrum:

"How unprecedented was David Wright's power outage last season? As Eric Seidman writes, literally unprecedented:

Wright hit 10 home runs last year in what was, for all intents and purposes, a full season of playing time. That's right, 10! After averaging 29 dingers per season from 2005-08, Wright’s bopping of just 10 long balls would be akin to Ichiro batting .264, Roy Halladay posting 4.47 ERA, or the Royals acquiring a batter whose OBP exceeds .319. It just isn’t bloody likely, and it can drive fans batty searching for causes. Was it the new Citi Field and its dimensions (not likely, as park effects would account for a dropoff of, at most, three or four homers)? A change in swing mechanics or in hitting philosophy? A lingering injury? Or, perhaps, a decision to mail it in until Omar Minaya signed more backup catchers? Whatever the cause, it was particularly peculiar that he sustained talent in the midst of being sapped for power, as Wright hit .307/.390, a BA and OBP virtually identical to his PECOTA forecast, but with a .447 SLG that more closely resembled what one might expect from teammates Daniel Murphy or Fernando Tatis.

--snip--

The actual 2010 projection pegs Wright’s weighted mean at .313/.415/.541, compared to the 2009 projection of 2010 which had him at .305/.405/.543. Simply put, PECOTA is very bullish on Wright moving forward and appears to be dismissing his 2009 power output, thinking it to be immaterial to what Wright is capable of moving forward. The anti-Brady Anderson in every sense of the term, there are few reasons to expect Wright to continue last year’s putrid power output. Something definitely happened last season to cause such a vast decrease, but searching through the annals of history reveals very, very few comparables from even a broad perspective, indicating that his 2009 campaign was not only anomalous, but literally unprecedented.

In all likelihood, fans a decade from now will look back at his 10-homer season as a blip on an otherwise fantastic career consisting of many more 30-plus dinger years, and in a few weeks, when live regular-season baseball once again occupies our time and Wright looks like the player of years past, few will even think about what happened last season.

I expect a big year out of Wright, too.

There's another way to look at this, though. If something literally unprecedented happens, shouldn't we at least consider the possibility that our usual models don't tell us what we want to know?

I believe in the projection, too. But probably not with quite as much conviction as I would if Wright's 2009 season, you know, precedented."


There may be another factor causing the home run numbers to decrease, and its all Tony Bernazard’s fault. As Neyer once again points out the Mets attempt to improve their poor clutch hitting in 2008 by instructing hitters to hit to the opposite field more. This was likely a bigger drain on power than CitiField.

In an effort to fix one problem the idiotic Mets likely created a different one.

And this is where a lot of traditional baseball people misrepresent statistical analysis. Part of statistical analysis is knowing where the analysis falls short. And when you can't explain what happened, its most likely luck, or a random act of the Universe.

Which I think is probably the best explanation for David Wright, which would mean a return to 25 homers in 2010, with at least 10 at home.