In the eight and a half years since his MLB debut, Wright has compiled 321 doubles, 543 extra-base hits, 614 walks,  788 runs scored, 813 runs batted in, and 2,390+ total bases.  Each ranks first all-time for any player donning a Mets uniform on a nightly basis.  Wright also holds the second spot all time with a .301 career batting average.  He’s tied for third all-time in slugging percentage (.506) and fourth all-time in on-base percentage (.381).  His 203 home runs, often considered the most important statistical column, currently ranks third all-time as well.

Clearly, David Wright ranks amongst the best offensive players to ever lace up in the blue and orange, but does that make him the best of all-time?  For all the positive records Wright currently holds and/or will hold if he ends up signing a contract extension in the not so distant future, he already holds the team’s all-time strikeout record, with 1,007.  I’m sure there will be many of you who will find other reasons to deny Wright’s greatness.  Often referred to as Captain Unclutch, Wright has posted a career .294 batting average with runners in scoring position.  That includes five career grand slams and a career batting average of .331 with the bases loaded.  Certainly not the numbers of a man who can’t come through when it matters.

Realistically, I think the most logically hesitation for most Mets fans to shy away from calling Wright the best Met ever is the fact that the team hasn’t won a championship during his tenure.  Unlike Seaver, Kranepool and Ryan who were a part of the 1969 champion ship team, and Strawberry, Gooden and Carter who were a part of the 1986 championship team, Wright hasn’t been able to bring the hardware back to Queens.  Should that matter?  Maybe..maybe not..  But much like the fact the Mets won’t be headed to the playoffs may impact RA Dickey’s Cy Young bid, the players who contributed to a championship will forever hold a soft spot in the hearts of Mets fans who are fortunate enough to remember those times.

Others may argue that Wright, despite being widely considered to be the face of the franchise and captain of the team, has either been incapable or worse yet, unwilling to become the vocal leader we once anticipated.  Ultimately, Wright’s name will always be attached to what will be considered a losing era in franchise history to this point, but should that take away from what he’s accomplished?

Do Tom Seaver’s 198 wins, his 2,541 strikeouts as a Met, and his contribution towards one of only two franchise championships trump Wright’s offensive contributions which have rewritten the team’s record books?  Perhaps its a player like Mike Piazza, whose timely home runs account for some of the most significant moments in franchise history, who holds the biggest part of your Mets’ heart?  The fact is that Wright’s career numbers to date, despite the slumps, the recent injuries, and the uncertain future should without question lodge him amongst the franchise’s greatest all-time players.  However, is he the best?

Follow me on Twitter at @RobPatterson83.

Does that mean the Mets are on pace to have the success the A’s had ten years ago that was chronicled in the book and movie Moneyball? Not likely.

For those of you who haven’t read the book (or watched the movie), Moneyball is based on a form of analysis called sabermetrics. Simply stated, moneyball theorizes that in order to win games, a team has to score more runs than their opponent by getting on base more frequently. It goes further to analyze which players actually help you score more runs using a series of mathematical equations called sabermetrics. This is obviously a very rudimentary explanation of moneyball, but it inevitably goes against everything the traditional scouts have been saying for over 100 years. Scouts search far and wide for the coveted five tool players which are as rare as unicorns and leprechauns. The search takes them around the globe with one goal in mind: to build the best teams they can by seeking out the best talent.

Sabermetrics allowed Beane to take advantage of players often ignored by other teams in order to build his historic 2002 team. They were ignored since teams didn’t understand their true value. This misunderstanding was due to not using sabermetrics to evaluate players. At least that is what we are led to believe. We will return to this later.

The movie alludes to the idea that Beane was looking for a way to analyze talent that was different from the traditional scouts. This was supposedly due to the fact that he was once considered a “can’t miss” five tool player. He was selected in the first round of the 1980 MLB draft (by the Mets coincidentally), but never lived up to expectations. The Mets had three first round picks that year, and held the number one pick. They used that number one pick on Daryl Strawberry after Beane signed on to play football and baseball with Stanford, even though scouts thought Beane was as close to a “sure thing” as you can get from a prospect. No teams wanted to risk a first round pick on a kid that was going to be John Elway’s heir at Stanford. The only team who could afford to take that risk was the New York Mets since they had two other first round picks.

To this day, scouts say Beane was the most gifted athlete in the 1980 draft class. But if Beane learned anything from his playing career, it’s that there is no such thing as a “sure thing.” This has him at odds with scouts who wanted to try and put the best overall players on the field, the way big market teams do.

Back to Beane’s 2002 Oakland Athletics team which was the basis of the book and movie Moneyball. First, let me say that the movie was entertaining. Unfortunately, it paints a picture of Beane building the entire 2002 A’s from a bunch of players that no other team wanted. It reminded me of the scene in the movie Major League when they are trying to build a team bad enough that will help the Indians move out of Cleveland. Nobody was previously playing in the California Penal League, and the team was actually stacked before Beane added the final few pieces of the puzzle using sabermetrics.

The movie fails to mention the fact that the pitching staff consisted of Barry Zito (2002 Cy Young Winner), Mark Mulder, and Tim Hudson who were affectionately known as the “Big 3.” Let’s put it this way, if Beane didn’t win the division with those three guys he should’ve lost his job. By the way, the closer was Billy Koch, and it gets even better. The A’s had Miguel Tejada (2002 AL MVP), Eric Chavez, Jermaine Dye, Ray Durham, and David Justice all in their lineup. So was the success of the A’s due to sabermetrics being used to add a few players that nobody even remembers from the team, or the fact that everything came together for the A’s due to great player development? And if you thought the 2002 pitching staff was scary, the 2003 & 2004 A’s added a young Rich Harden to the mix. How did the Athletics manage to never win a World Series with those guys on their pitching staff?

Now let’s get back to the Mets. I think everyone will agree the Mets don’t have the talent the A’s had in the early 2000s. Not only that, but the A’s are a small market team, so they had to come up with creative ways to compete with big market teams. Look at it this way - when a person with a lower income goes to buy a car, they look for different attributes in that car than a person with a higher income would. The person with lower income goes to buy a Honda. It will get you back and forth to work, it’s reliable and good on gas, but you aren’t winning any races. The person with higher income goes to buy a Corvette, and the license plate reads “eat my dust.”

The Mets are a large market team. They shouldn’t be shopping for Hondas. Their license plate should read “eat my dust.” It doesn’t make sense for them to use the strategies of the small market teams. Their strategy should be to use their revenue stream to crush their opponents. The Mets can certainly learn a thing or two about player development from the Athletics of the early 2000s, but I’m still not sold on the fact that sabermetrics had anything to do with the success of those teams after looking at the players on that roster.

Can the Mets build a winning team using sabermetrics and moneyball? I know one thing for certain – no small market teams have won the World Series using sabermetrics alone in the past ten years. So if the Mets want to start winning again, they better start taking the money out of Moneyball, and start spending it.