NEW YORK — Terry Collins saved the New York Mets’ biggest — and bleakest — news for last during his pregame press conference Tuesday afternoon, when he announced as he tried to exit the podium that third baseman David Wright would not play because of increased pain in his chronically sore left shoulder.
A few hours later, the Mets wasted no time confirming the obvious fallout from Collins’ pregame revelation. Moments after the final out of the Mets’ 2-0 win over the Colorado Rockies at Citi Field, the team issued a press release announcing that Wright was done for the season due to persistent inflammation in his left rotator cuff that was revealed during an MRI in Manhattan earlier Tuesday. He has been prescribed a six-week program of rest and rehabilitation.
Wright said at a postgame press conference that he was relieved to find out he didn’t need surgery and that he hoped to be 100 percent by the time the Mets report to spring training in February.
“I just didn’t want to do something this year that would cause this thing to last into next year,” Wright said. “I wanted to do whatever it took to kind of get rid of this so that I didn’t have to feel this way next year.”
Wright clearly hasn’t felt like himself for much of the season. He missed seven games from June 27 through July 4 with a strained left rotator cuff, though he played through pain for several weeks prior to the diagnosis.
Wright ended the first half with a flourish (.364 with two homers, six extra-base hits and seven RBIs in his final nine games) but hit just .238 with no homers, seven extra-base hits and 15 RBIs in 181 at-bats following the All-Star Break.
He actually had his best game of the second half on Monday, when he doubled and tripled in the Mets’ 3-2 win, but Wright admitted to team doctors afterward that his shoulder wasn’t improving.
Wright finishes the season with .269 average, the second-lowest average of his career. He set career lows with eight homers, a .324 on-base percentage and a .374 slugging percentage. He had 63 RBIs, his fourth-lowest total behind only his rookie season in 2004 (when he played just 69 games) and his injury-shortened 2011 and 2013 seasons.
On Tuesday, Wright refused to blame his shoulder for his decreased production.
“As I’ve said all along: I’m not one to make excuses, and I’m not going to start doing that now,” Wright said “I think there were times where I should have done better. I could have done better. Obviously, this season has left a sour taste in my mouth, as far as both the injury side of it and the production side of it.”
While Wright would like to forget 2014 as soon as possible, those around him said they were impressed with his persistence and willingness to play at less than 100 percent.
“David did what captains do: He persevered,” Mets general manager Sandy Alderson said Tuesday night. “He kept going. He gutted it out. Numbers or no numbers he did what we expected. He made major contributions to the team by continuing to perform.”
Mets second baseman Daniel Murphy, the second-longest tenured player on the team behind Wright, said he wasn’t surprised Wright played at far less than 100 percent. Wright played several weeks with an undiagnosed stress fracture in his back in 2011 and played through a hamstring injury for much of last year.
“We’ve seen what David is willing to play through,” Murphy said. “What he’s willing to put on the line for his teammates and for this organization. So I think we all had thoughts that he was banged up — even more so when we saw what he was doing on a daily basis. Because you look at the back of his baseball card, you know what David Wright can do over the course of a full season.”
Now the Mets and Wright have to hope he can regain that form in 2015 and that he’s not entering the decline phase of his career. Wright, who is signed through 2020, has missed 144 games in the past four seasons and turns 32 in December.
“I’m confident that after getting healthy and going through as normal of an offseason as possible, that I’ll return to doing what I firmly believe that I’m capable of doing on a baseball field,” Wright said.