Friday, March 15, 2013

Better Safe Than Sorry

The Mets announced today that David Wright has a strained intercostal muscle and will rest for 3-5 days before thinking about resuming any activity.  It is a similar injury to the one Daniel Murphy suffered earlier in spring training and he is just working his way back into games now.  Obviously, Opening Day is in jeopardy for Wright as that is only 17 days away.

One way to look at this is that David should never have been playing in the World Baseball Classic and participating in all those games lead to this injury.  However, if we want to bring the WBC into this maybe we could look at how it helped.  David Wright said this strain has been bothering him since before the tournament started.  If he had stayed back in spring training he would not have been playing as much and perhaps the injury would not have become bothersome enough to bring up for another week.  This is Wright, the guy who has played through a broken back and a broken pinky.  He doesn't complain unless something is really a problem and the WBC put him in a place where he had to bring it up.

The timing could also be worse than it is.  While it's the second half of spring training, it is still spring training.  The games don't count until April 1 so if David needs a month to recover, he'll spend the first two weeks missing meaningless games.  And even if he misses Opening Day and a week or two of April, he'll come back and be ready for the rest of the season.  He will still have plenty of time to have a successful season.  By the mid-May or June nobody will think about whether or not Wright was there on April 4 because he will be there for the 4th of every month until October.

Let's not forget that David could be back in five days and start the season normally.

The Mets are lucky that they can afford to be cautious with Wright.  If he is out for a month, which is what Terry Collins predicts, he will miss minimal regular season time.  Be thankful David had a reason to deal with this now and not in a week or a month.  Spring training injuries happen but I really don't think this is anything to worry about.

Rest up, David!

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