Analyzing David Wright With Just One Swing

by
March 16, 2015

2014 was a disappointment for David Wright, posting his lowest career numbers in almost every offensive category: OBP, SLG, OPS, ISO, wRC+, wOBA, and WAR. Cries of Wright being washed up began springing up immediately – he’s a 31-year-old who saw significant drops in almost every offensive category possible. However, everything might not be as it seems.

Wright injured his left shoulder early in the season and tried to play through it before finally getting shut down in September. Here’s Wright’s home run chart for 2014.

Now here’s his home run chart for 2012-13.

Do you notice a difference? Wright did not hit a single home run to right or center field the entire season last year, and that’s always been something of a trademark for him. The injury to his front shoulder had a clear effect on his opposite field power, and that effect (or lack thereof) was apparent in yesterday’s Mets-Nats spring training game, where Wright did this.

Now that right there is something that Mets fans haven’t seen since Wright’s 2013 season, where he did it rather regularly, such as this home run against Craig Kimbrel.

Look at those two swings: the exact same swing, both demolishing the ball to the same spot of the field. By all accounts, David Wright is healthy. His shoulder is 100% and he’s in The Best Shape of His Life. In baseball, you never want to use a sample size of one to draw a conclusion, but when Captain America comes into the season showing off the trademark power he didn’t show in the Mets’ previous 162 games, there’s plenty of reason to get excited.

Just look at this swing. That’s the swing of a man ready to put America (and the Mets) on his back.





 

A Mets fan who tries his best to be objective

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Jon L.member
9 years ago

For one-swing analysis, not bad!

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Senor_Met
9 years ago
Reply to  Jon L.

Thanks! I’m hoping I’m not getting ahead of myself here.

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Mike Trout
9 years ago

David Wright’s swing always seemed to generate a lot more power from his upper body than his lower body (even in the Kimbrel HR gif his hips don’t turn all the way around), interesting to see in the recent oppo HR he seemed to generate more rotation than he used to. I wonder if that’s a conscious effort by him to get more of his body into the ball or whether it’s just one swing.

Anyway, good to see the real David Wright is back!

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Senor_Met
9 years ago
Reply to  Mike Trout

Hmm. I’m far from a scout and haven’t played since I was 13, so I’m not at all skilled in noticing the subtleties of mechanics, but it doesn’t look like he rotated his lower body all that much more in the spring HR. Really, the only difference I noticed is that the swing was a bit longer but that was because the pitch was closer to the outer half than the Kimbrel HR was.

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FM Mood
9 years ago

I saw this live and thought about it in a similar way. Just the fact that he had the physical ability to hit the ball that far to straight away center seems to speak well for his shoulder’s health.

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