For almost 10 years, David Wright was among the top players in baseball; nonetheless, his career will be remembered as one of unrealized promise because of the injuries that ended his playing days.
Wright is clearly a very long shot when he appears on the Baseball Hall of Fame ballot for the first time in 2024, but if he receives the 5% vote this year, he may remain on the ballot for many years to come.
Between 2005 and 2013, Wright received two Gold Glove awards, batted.302 with an OPS of.890, and had the seventh-highest WAR in baseball. At age 31, his career up to that point appeared to be that of a future Hall of Famer.
In 2011, during a diving tag, Wright sustained a stress fracture in his back, the first of several serious injuries that would ultimately end his career prematurely.
Wright was a shining light for a Mets team that missed out on the postseason for almost ten years despite being an All-Star in seven of his first nine full seasons. He concluded his career 10 home runs short of Darryl Strawberry’s team record, and he is the franchise’s all-time leader in nearly every offensive statistic.
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After being limited to 38 games due to spinal stenosis in 2015, Wright underwent neck surgery in 2016 (missing 37 games) which resulted in shoulder issues and eventually rotator cuff surgery in 2017, a season he missed completely. In 2016, he played in his final significant at-bat at the age of 33.
In 2018, Wright stated, “Playing baseball is debilitating.”
David Wright’s case
With Wright’s 2004 big-league debut at age 21, the Mets were determined by the mid-aughts to surpass the Yankees in the tabloids. The Mets possessed two phenoms, Pedro Martinez and Carlos Beltran, whom they signed in the 2004–05 winter to make a splash, and Jose Reyes, a fellow ballot newbie.
Wright immediately lived up to the hype.
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