Wright seems to be snapping out of funk

David Wright excitedly walked through the Mets clubhouse more than an hour after their 8-6 victory over the Nationals, the sweat on his forehead and shirt the evidence from a postgame workout.

That he chose to work out in a T-shirt celebrating the Grapefruit League was fitting, in a way, considering nothing represents optimism and clean slate than spring training.

Right now, Wright's season is begging for a fresh outlook. The strikeouts he has amassed this season are on the ledger, but that's OK. Last night, he was in no mood to dissect his past problems, but rather to look excitedly toward the future.

"It feels good," he said, "to have something positive to build on."

And who could blame him? Wright went 3-for-4 with two opposite-field doubles and a walk, representing a huge leap from a week that has been dominated by too many swings and misses followed by the walk back to the dugout that every baseball player hates.

The strikeouts took its toll on Wright emotionally, no doubt about it. "Flustered" is the word that hitting coach Howard Johnson used to describe Wright's at-bats in the past week, and it seems fitting.

Wright remains on pace to strike out more than 200 times this season, and that certainly has to be alarming and frustrating to the Mets. But that's not what has bothered Johnson so far this season.

If the Mets' hitting coach could snap his fingers and change one thing about Wright's 2010 season, it would be his streakiness. "He's had stretches where he's been really good," Johnson said, "and stretches where he's been really bad."

Now that Wright has broken out of his latest slump, with five hits and a walk in his last six at-bats, the question now becomes: how long will this next hot streak last? "The goal," Johnson said, "is to keep him out of those deep mini-slumps he gets into."

Wright doesn't know the answer, saying simply that he's felt good for some time. He was frustrated not by how he felt, but rather that his work in the cage wasn't translated on the field, except for darn strikeouts. "It feels good to see some results," Wright said. "I feel like I've been putting some good work in."

Now, here's the enigma about Wright's season: Ask anyone who has followed the Mets this season about Wright, and the consensus is that he's off to a bad start. And when you look at the strikeouts, you really have a hard time arguing that point.

But if you told any Mets fan in spring training that Wright would have a .969 OPS as we reach the middle of May, as he does this morning, even the most optimistic person wearing blue and orange would have been drooling over the prospect.

Remember, the biggest question about Wright coming into the season was regarding the power outage of 2009, and whether it was a fluke or a sign of things to come. Despite the strikeouts, right now what we've seen so far from Wright is definitively not a repeat of 2009.

"I think at times he's been trying to do too much, and we just need him to let the game come to him," Johnson said. "Big picture, he's got pretty good numbers where he's at. He's going to end up having a pretty good season."

Manager Jerry Manuel took great delight in Wright's opposite-field doubles, saying they reminded him of the player who hit .325 in 2007. "Hopefully," Manuel said, "we can get some more of that." And for one night, at least, that definitely seems possible.