You probably wouldn't call a player that hit .307, drove in 72 runs, and stole 27 bases a failure, but that's what many fantasy baseball players were caling New York Mets' third baseman David Wright last year.
With the way Wright was viewed before last season—one of the game's true elite third baseman—those numbers just didn't cut it.
He totaled just 10 home runs, down from his previous two seasons in which he hit at least 30, and his strikeouts were far higher than in any previous season (140 and his previous high was 118).
The 27 steals and .307 average were nice, but the Mets' offense doesn't need their third baseman to necessarily put up those numbers—they need a powerful bat.
With the injuries sustained last year by Carlos Delgado, Carlos Beltran, and Jose Reyes, Wright's failures were especially hard to stomach.
It made the debut of the Mets' new park, Citi Field, one to forget.
You have to wonder if Wright and other Mets players wish they could forget the new park existed at all, with the way the team's power numbers declined so sharply last year.
Labeled a "pitcher's park," the Mets will need to find a more efficient way to score runs, and likely won't be able to rely on the long ball.
Of course the enigma that Wright presented last year was that even his home run totals on the road were sub-par (just five total).
Overall, it was a power outage across the board for the 27-year-old superstar.
What's more troubling for Wright, is that his BABIP was about fifty points higher than his career average.
That could suggest Wright was even somewhat lucky in a sense, and that his .307 batting average could have decreased dramatically.
If he were a player that hit .270 with his lack of power, Wright would have all but fallen off the map for useful third basemen.
Alex Rodriguez was at one point the only player standing in the way of Wright to become the best third baseman in baseball, but last year's freefall left Wright behind players like Evan Longoria, Mark Reynolds, Pablo Sandoval, and Ryan Zimmerman.
That's not the way it was supposed to be for Wright.
Perhaps playing under the microscope of New York got to him.
Perhaps it was the injury-bug that decimated his roster and left Wright the only big bat available for the Mets.
Perhaps he just never fully adjusted to playing at Citi Field.
Whatever the case may be, David Wright just did not pan out last season in New York.
Players that possess 30/30 potential like Wright are so few and far between and it's a real shame when one of them has such a sub-par year.
2010 represents a big year for Wright to jump back onto the national scene and show fans across the country that he is the same-old superstar that fans have come to know.
He'll fall a bit in fantasy drafts, but the potential reward for him is so great, it would be foolish to pass him up.
Not much went right last year for the Mets or David, but this is still one of the most exciting players in baseball, and 2010 could be a huge year in New York for David Wright.
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