Is It Fair To Compare David Wright To Alex Rodriguez?

I came across an interesting blurb by Matt Cerrone as I was checking out MetsBlog this morning.

While commenting on David Wright’s post game comments, Matt wrote…

Wright better be careful, especially with his post-game comments, as, from what I can tell listening to other fans, he is walking dangerously close to being portrayed like Alex Rodriguez, i.e., a fat stat line, but no big hits.

At first glance I thought no harm, no foul, but then I read it again and I strongly felt it was an undeserved knock on David Wright. This injustice shall not stand.

Alex Rodriguez has cast himself as the greatest baseball player on the planet. He lobbied hard to get the Yankees to fork over $300 million dollars after already collecting on his prior $250 million dollar contract.

When you demand that type of money much is expected of you… Like a clutch hit now and then… or a World Series ring!

David Wright is playing in his fourth full season and is still growing as a player. And yet, he has outproduced Alex Rodriguez in almost every statistical category except for salary this season.

PLAYER	AVG	HR	RBI	RS	2B	3B	BB	SALARY
David Wright	.300	31	114	104	40	2	84	$5.2 M
Alex Rodriguez	.305	34	100	99	32	0	59	$28 M

Of course, we would all like to see Wright take it up a notch when the bases are full, but still he is better than Rodriguez. With the bases loaded Wright has an OPS of .649 compared to .517 for A-Rod. In 15 at-bats Wright has generated 10 RBI, compared to seven for A-Rod.

With runners in scoring position from 2005-2007, David Wright is batting .326, and in that same time frame Wright is batting .425 with the bases loaded. Wright actually beats Derek Jeter as well as Alex Rodriguez in those same statistics in that same time frame. 

This season, with runners on base, Wright is batting .280 and has an OPS of .873.

I’m not saying that all of these stats are outstanding numbers, but they are in no way bad enough to start labeling Wright as non-performer at the ripe old age of 25.