David Wright: “Can’t Predict” Opening Day
David Wright rejoined the Mets in Port St. Lucie on Sunday after getting treatment in New York for his intercostal strain. The obvious question when he met with reporters was whether he will be ready for Opening Day. The noncommittal answer is not what Mets fans wanted to hear.
“That’s looking to predict the future, and I can’t do that, and I won’t do that, because it’s the first day I’ve been back in camp,” Wright said. “So I don’t know how I’m going to feel tomorrow. I don’t know how I’m going to feel the next day. I’ll tell you that’s my goal (to be ready for Opening Day)… But I can’t predict one way or another.”
Well that’s just great. Possibly no David Wright on Opening Day. Probably no Johan Santana, either. At least Mr. Met will be there, hopefully. He is, after all, the third most popular Met these days after Wright and Santana.
In any case, Wright said he does not blame the World Baseball Classic for his injury.
“I always play through whatever I can,” he said. “It doesn’t matter if it’s the WBC or spring training or the regular season. I play through what I can tolerate playing through. And I could tolerate playing through it and I was fine with it.”
Until, of course, it started hurting more, at which point he told the Team USA people, who quickly notified the Mets. I believe Wright when he says he plays through what he can tolerate, but I wonder if he would have continued playing meaningless Spring Training games, so in that way the WBC might be partially to blame.
Mark Teixeira is another injured player who doesn’t blame the WBC. As he revealed Sunday that his wrist injury could possibly be bad enough to require season-ending surgery, Teixeira would not point a finger at the tournament. He probably couldn’t point anyway, given his injury.
“It has nothing to do with the WBC,” he said. “We started playing games on the 23rd of February. That’s insane. We’re usually just reporting on Feb. 23. I’ve been hitting off a tee since December. This was a freak injury. The nature of baseball now is, you show up at spring training early and you start playing games. The WBC had nothing to do with it.”
But here’s the thing: didn’t they start playing games a week early because of the WBC? Any way you slice it, the timing of the WBC is just not good for MLB and its players. And the Mets lose might David Wright to start the season because of it.