Rob Neyer at ESPN listed his 4 leading candidates for NL MVP. David Wright was one of them. The biggest irony? Wright’s having his worst season. He has the lowest slugging percentage of his career, 30 points lower than last year. OBP only 3 points above his career low, 32 points lower than last year. Same caught stealing as each of last 2 years, but with only half as many steals as last year. RBI total is good, but that probably says more about Reyes than it does about him. Fielding percentage a bit up, Range Factor a bit down.
In fairness:
- Neyer thought he should win last year too. Mostly because Neyer park-adjusted away Rollins, Holiday, and Fielder’s statistical advantages.
- Neyer may be right. Wright’s having a very good year, just not quite as good as his other years, and significantly worse than last year.
- Neyer did say that he’d need to pick up his numbers a bit and lead the Mets to a division title for him to really have a chance. Last year he finished 4th largely because of the Mets’ historic collapse and the Phillies’ and Rockies’ historic comebacks. Had the Mets and Padres held on, Wright would have probably finished second only to Fielder.
The greatest thing about this is seeing other people’s comments that the Mets’ other 25 year old may be an even stronger candidate. Though for reasons that I think are mostly BS, Reyes has a bad rap. I love everything about Reyes, especially his happiness, enthusiasm and love of the game, but he’s picked up a bad reputation. And don’t look now, but Santana would be a Cy Young Award candidate if he were getting reasonable support from his offense and bullpen.
So — don’t look now, but the Mets have two 25 year-old MVP candidates and one of the best pitchers in the game. And some exciting rookies, the NL’s best starting rotation, and a one and a half game lead. Wow, how far we’ve come in the past 2 months. Remember when we didn’t even have an All Star, were under 500, and were baseball’s most disappointing team? That was less than 2 months ago. On July 4 we were 42-44. Let’s hope this never gets back there.
Posted by Gil Reich 
