David Wright's Inability to Accept His Fate is Holding Back the Mets

By Djack

It's never easy calling it quits in anything when it's not on your own terms. If a doctor were to tell me I could never eat Salmon again, a food that I don't even enjoy, I'd have an uncontrollable impulse itching at me to eat salmon. I'm sure that's exactly how David Wright feels, except multiplied by a million. Baseball is his passion, his first love, after a decade of putting up with the shitty Mets he finally gets his chance to win and it gets taken from him. Spinal stenosis is basically a death sentence when it comes to sports, look at the likes of Rick Dipietro, Don Mattingly, and Michael Irvin, once they got the diagnoses their career were all respectively over. All great players, all devoted to the game, unfortunately all the same diagnosis, inevitably leading them all to retirement.David Wright, arguably one of the greatest players in Mets franchise history, will be amongst those names. He already should be, however he just refuses to let go, and it's hard for me to crush him for it.

​Try telling a guy that has put in countless hours trying to get back on the field, even if it's in a limited role, to just quit trying because it's never going to happen. Fact of the matter is David Wright has earned the right(no pun intended) to do whatever it is that his heart pleases when it comes to the Mets organization. He carried them through some rough years, he earned that contract, and deserves every penny coming his way. Now, with all that being said, David Wright is single handedly handcuffing the Mets organization from making any big free agent splashes.

The absolute last thing I wanna do is give the Mets organization a cop out for being dormant in the big free agent market.  Not going to give a big market team any breaks in that area. However, when you're uncertain about $20 million of cap space potentially not being picked up by insurance on the off chance that David Wright ends up being able to play, I can't blame them for being hesitant. Knowing the Mets misfortune they would sign a guy like Mike Moustakas and somehow, someway, David Wright would miraculously heal, leaving the Mets with a financial fiasco, along with a log jam at third base. 

Basically, if David Wright retired it would remove the last excuse the Mets have for not putting on their big boy pants and spending New York money. Not that they really have any excuse not to spend money now since they're way under the tax threshold and are 10 years removed of the Bernie Madoff ponzi scheme. Regardless, the Mets are being somewhat handcuffed by their former franchise player. Funny how shit ends up working out, the guy that carried pathetic Met teams for years is now part of the reason the Mets can't take the next step. I was all for the David Wright comeback story, at this point though, it's time to hang em up. It's just not going to happen and accepting that is the first step.