Despite Wright's return, Mets fall to Rockies
DENVER - David Wright, his head clear after two weeks on the disabled list, considered his return Tuesday a no-brainer. And he believes the same about the rest of the injured Mets as they struggle to make it back on the field before the end of this season. There's no extra credit in baseball.
When asked before last night's game if Carlos Beltran was an "inspiration" for trying to overcome a debilitating bone bruise and play this final month, Wright didn't blink. It was bad enough that Wright was forced to sit for two weeks. He can't imagine anyone choosing to stay on the DL a minute longer than they should.
"It's what you're supposed to do," Wright said. "You're supposed to go out there and play hard. With that comes some injuries, and when you get hurt, you do your rehab, you get better and get back in the lineup. That's just what you're supposed to do."
Even with Wright, the Mets still stumbled in an 8-3 loss to the Rockies, thanks to a terrible performance by Mike Pelfrey, who allowed six hits, five walks and seven runs in four innings. Wright went 1-for-3 with a walk and two strikeouts in his return from a concussion, but the Rockies gave the Mets a mile-high headache with homers by Carlos Gonzalez and Todd Helton.
Wright had a slightly different look as he donned the new Rawlings S100 helmet and returned to the lineup in his customary No. 3 spot. Wright shrugged off questions about the bulkier, more protective headgear, but it was a little strange.
Howie Rose, the Mets' radio voice, described Wright as looking like Beetle Bailey. Others mentioned the Great Gazoo."It was all in good fun," Wright said. "Our guys were laughing. The guys were laughing at me on the other side."
In his opening at-bat, Wright smacked a first-pitch fastball into leftfield for a single. It was his first time in the batter's box since the Giants' Matt Cain drilled him in the head with a 93-mph fastball and Wright never flinched. "For the most part, I felt surprising good," Wright said. "Hopefully, I can build on that and finish strong."
If not for a baserunning blunder by Angel Pagan, who somehow got caught off second on Luis Castillo's single, Wright would have picked up an RBI, too.
Instead, he set up Jeff Francoeur's sacrifice fly and later scored on Fernando Tatis' double. Wright also walked in the third inning and struck out in the fifth. He made a nice charging play on Jorge De La Rosa's sacrifice bunt in the second inning.
With one swing, and a trip around the bases, Wright quickly put to rest any lingering concerns over any potential post-concussion symptoms. Still, Jerry Manuel plans to sit Wright for today's game, then start him in tomorrow's series finale at Coors Field before the trip back to New York.
At that point, Manuel expects Wright to become an everyday player again. It didn't take very long for him to drop any plans of giving Wright a breather between games as he had talked about last weekend in Chicago.
"Once we get home, he should be back and ready to go and play the rest of the year with an occasional break here and there," Manuel said. "I don't want to make this a pattern of an off-a-day, on-a-day type of thing."
Wright wasn't going to put up with that, anyway. With so much talk about September being the equivalent of garbage time for the Mets, and how many of their injured players would be better off shutting down their seasons, that never factored into Wright's thinking.
"I want to be out there no matter if we're winning the division, if we're losing the division or 10-15 games out," Wright said.
