Wright Makes a Push for MVP Consideration With Hot Streak

At the beginning of last night's game against the Los Angeles Dodgers, David Wright had reached base in 14 of his last 18 trips to the plate, impressive enough without considering that Jake Peavy and Brad Penny, legitimate candidates for the Cy Young Award, started two of those games. This left his batting line for the season at .316 AVG/.411 OBA/.530 SLG, with 28 stolen bases in 31 tries, plus very good defense at third base. He's been the best player in the league this year, and he's been at his hottest over the last month, as the Mets have fought their way out of a pennant race and into a commanding position atop the standings. This is your National League MVP.

I'm not much for drawing arbitrary distinctions and then building conclusions based on them. But in Wright's case, there are two endpoints that are impossible to ignore. The first is April 30: At the end of play on that day, Wright had racked up a grand total of six runs batted in for the month, without a single home run. What was odd was that while nothing seemed to be wrong with his swing or his approach, he had stopped hitting for average and power. His line heading into May was .246/.370/.311, and there was serious speculation that he had somehow lost his power after the 2006 All-Star break. Since then, Wright has hit .333/.420/.581. He's been Jimmie Foxx with speed and defense.

The second endpoint is July 25: That was the day on which Willie Randolph promoted Wright into the no. 3 spot in the batting order. It will be his for years to come. On that day, the Mets held a three-game lead over the Braves in the division race. Since then, they've doubled it, and Wright has hit .398/.527/.622. He's been Ted Williams with speed and defense.

In both cases, nothing magical happened. Wright did not go to bed on April 30 a shell of the player he is, and wake up a new player in full command of new powers; nor did being entrusted with the no. 3 spot in the lineup — being told, essentially, that he was the team's best hitter — cause him to suddenly become a better player. But in both cases, nothing randomly happened, either.

Wright broke out of his seasonopening slump because he's an excellent player, and was bound to start hitting. That he seems to have become a better version of his old self is the interesting part, and it conforms to an interesting idea first expressed by the writer Brock Hanke in his theory of iambic development. Hanke postulated that baseball is a game of adjustments and counter-adjustments. As a player develops, he grows. A temporary regression follows while enemy players adjust to his weaknesses. He then grows more as he addresses those weaknesses.

This fits Wright almost too well. He established himself in the majors so young, as a complete and mature player that it's easy to forget there were always areas in which he needed improvement. They weren't as glaring as they are for most young players — rather than being unable to hit a curveball, for instance, he seemed to have problems with fastballs up and in, or with pitch sequences that changed his line of sight too often — but they were there, and opponents were exploiting them. Around the beginning of May, some of those holes closed, and he came out of a slump. All at once, it was as if he was a new player.

Similarly, I wouldn't say that Wright's ferocious August and being moved up in the order were exactly coincidence. He was moved up because he was the team's best hitter and because Carlos Beltran was injured, but it was also time: He was finally ready. All summer long, we've seen something remarkable happen, as Wright has seemed to realize that he has abilities that he has never exploited, and has incorporated them into his game. Two things in particular stand out. First, he's been somewhat more aggressive in hitter's counts. Second, while he still hits to all fields, he isn't always trying to muscle the ball into right-center, as he used to do. These aren't major points, but they are the sorts that mark the difference between an excellent young player and an elite one. What we've seen over the last month is Wright asserting his mastery of them while the league hasn't yet caught up.

All of this is great news for Mets fans. Coming into this season, the one open question about Wright was whether he had another gear. Most young players have an obvious flaw in their games, and thus an obvious way to improve. It was clear after each of the last two years, for instance, that Jose Reyes would become a vastly better player if he could improve his plate discipline, and as he has, he's become one of the very best players in baseball. There weren't such glaring flaws in Wright's game, and while that was a good thing, it also left open the possibility that he didn't have a great leap forward in him. It seems that he did.

Wright may or may not win the MVP this year; that will depend on September. I wouldn't bet against it though. When you account for playing time, the only clearly better hitter in the league this year has been Florida's Hanley Ramirez, and he's an awful defender playing for a non-contender. Atlanta's Chipper Jones and Florida's Miguel Cabrera are hitting as well as Wright is, but Jones has been injured, and neither can field. Relative to position, Wright is out-hitting Reyes, St. Louis' Albert Pujols, and Milwaukee's Prince Fielder, and he's been at his most dominant when his team needed him the most. There's nothing more to ask from a player. Wright has done everything this year, and with a few more weeks he might just do what no other Met has ever done — bring home a great, gaudy bit of hardware. With any luck, it will be only the second-gaudiest hunk of metal he wins this fall.

tmarchman@nysun.com