Over the years, it can be counted on one hand how many times David Wright has made a mental mistake. He is one of the most fundamentally sound players in the game with tremendous baseball instincts, and he has a thorough understanding of each situation and scenario he has been faced with.
But on Friday, Wright committed a crucial mental mistake in the ninth inning, ultimately costing the Mets two runs and a game against the Braves at Turner Field.
With Rafael Montero on the eighth inning and one out with the game tied, Andrelton Simmons Wright fielded a routine groundball from Andrelton Simmons to the left of third. But instead of getting Simmons – the sure out – at first, he instead tried to tag Jace Peterson (the lead run) who broke from second base. He missed the tag and everyone was safe.
To make matters worse, nobody was covering second base because Daniel Murphy went to back up first, as he was supposed to do, and Simmons easily reached second.
“You have a split second to make a decision,” Wright said after the game. “I made a decision. It turned out to be the incorrect one. You go field the ball, and obviously you want to get that runner out of scoring position. I thought I could make a tag on him.”
Montero later had the bases loaded and two outs, but Phil Gosselin singled on a 3-2 count to give Atlanta the lead.
“If I can tag him out right there, it’s a great play. But if what happened, happened, it’s not a good play,” Wright said.
The stink of it is if Wright had made the play to first and Montero then proceeded to strike out Cameron Maybin as he did, the Mets go to the ninth inning tied instead.
Montero was forced into a difficult situation, but there’s also an argument to be made he couldn’t stop the bleeding and find a way out of the jam.
He became one-dimensional in the final sequence to Gosselin, pounding the zone with fastballs which made him predictable, especially with the bases loaded and two outs. It’s a fair criticism, but Montero’s problem was less about the pitch selection and more about his pitch execution. Perhaps a more mature pitcher uses different pitches in an earlier part of the count, but he got beat with his best pitch in a good battle.
“At this level, you’ve got to tell hitters you are going to throw your breaking ball,” Collins said about Montero. “He’s got a good changeup, and he’s got a good breaking ball. I just think he got himself in a situation where he didn’t want to get behind in the count, but you’ve still got to use it.”
Still, It would be less understandable if he had thrown him a 3-2 slider which missed the zone, and he ended up walking in the go-ahead run.
Poor defense has been a recurring theme in the first four games for the Mets, and this time it was they who beat themselves by affording Atlanta extra outs in multiple innings. The mistake was representative of what was a really ugly night for the Mets behind their pitchers. The Mets were basically handed two games earlier this week thanks to poor defense from the Nationals, and they essentially turned around and handed a game to the Braves in a similar manner.
“We gave them some extra outs two or three times, and you’re going to get beat at this level,” Terry Collins said after the game.
Just Mets 