David Wright Trade Rumors: Why He May Be Dealt During the Offseason

Ken Rosenthal of Foxsports.com recently wrote a piece on the possibility of the New York Mets trading their star slugger David Wright in the offseason.

Rosenthal makes the point that the Mets could obtain a wealth of prospects in return, essentially an even better version of the Carlos Beltran trade. He also acknowledges that trading Wright in the offseason would be a dangerous public relations move for the Wilpons.

This simply cannot happen. There is no way that Sandy Alderson or the Wilpons can deprive Mets fans of their never-ending thirst for a franchise player. Wait that already happened when they didn't re-sign Jose Reyes? Oh yeah, I forgot.

So there's no way that this can happen for a second time. The front office would be absolutely hammered by the New York media in a way that we haven't witnessed since, well, Reyes wasn't re-signed. Trading David Wright during the offseason doesn't seem likely though, as he is currently hitting .411 with a .513 on-base percentage.

The two sides said they wanted to wait for things to pan out this season before jumping to any conclusions, and it's worked out great for both of them so far. Wright is locked in, absolutely tearing the cover off the ball and is looking like the player he was for the first four seasons of his career. And the Wilpons are thanking their lucky stars that the team is 21-17, at least five or six games better than most preseason predictions.

Trading Wright in the offseason would be seriously detrimental to the Mets' lineup. Right now they are sixth in the league in average and on-base percentage, but 15th in runs. Wright is the only guy in the lineup that has proven he can consistently hit for power, even though his power numbers have tailed off in the last couple of seasons.

Ike Davis isn't hitting for power, let alone anything at all. Lucas Duda hasn't found his groove yet, but he seems to be getting more comfortable lately.

Not only is Wright the team's lone proven power hitter, he's one of only two true hitters that Terry Collins has to work with. Daniel Murphy is the other —a doubles machine—but he doesn't have the power stroke to compensate for the loss of Wright.

It's obvious that Wright is fully invested in this baseball club. Especially when he nearly bit Terry Collins' head off after he was removed from the game because his manager didn't want him to fall victim to the beanball war that D.J. Carrasco started (Carrasco has since been designated for assignment following another bad outing in Cincinnati last night).

Wright is hitting 41 points higher than any other player in the National League. According to a post-game stat provided by SNY, Wright has posted the highest on-base percentage of any Met through 38 games. Not even the Wilpons can mess this one up.

This would be an awful way to start the new era of post-Madoff Mets baseball. The Wilpons did well in signing Jon Niese to a contract extension, but how bad would it look if the front office signed a pitcher with a No. 2 starter upside (at best), then refused to re-sign the hottest hitter on the planet other than Josh Hamilton?

Actually, this seems like the typical Wilpon thing to do. It's one of those situations when you clearly have the right decision laid out in front of you, but you still make the wrong one anyway.

Trading Wright would bring in great prospects for sure, but how many times can we stand to see star players lost for unproven young talent? Don't get me wrong, it's great that the farm system is filled with so many quality arms, but how much longer can we keep waiting for the future? Zach Wheeler, Matt Harvey and Jeurys Familia are all on the cusp of become big league pitchers within a year or two, so why do we have to get more young guys?

Re-signing Wright is going to cost the Mets though, as he will probably command a contract somewhere in the range of Ryan Zimmerman's six-year $100 million dollar deal, as Rosenthal mentioned. The $100 million range might be a bit of a stretch though, as Wright will be 30 next season and the frugal Alderson probably won't put that type of offer on the table. I wouldn't be surprised to see Wright give the Mets a hometown discount either, as long as they make this process easier than they did with Reyes.

Wright isn't a greedy guy, and he knows how detrimental age is to a huge contract. It seems as though he loves playing in New York, despite the constant front-office slights. The most notable of them coming when the team signed Reyes to a contract extension for more money and years than they did Wright. 

The David Wright we're seeing now is the one that's here to stay. His strikeouts are way down, his walks are way up and he's actually hitting with two strikes like he used to. He's staying in on pitches, inside-outing fastballs and not worrying about hitting home runs.

The Wilpons keep saying that the onus is on Alderson to decide what he wants to do with Wright. We're now more than six weeks into the 2012 season and Wright has left his GM no choice but to begin contract negotiations, so why haven't they begun yet?

When it's all said and done, I firmly believe that Wright will be back in New York for at least the next five years and will eventually go down as the franchise's greatest player since Tom Seaver.

If he's not re-signed, it will be a tough pill to swallow. He's the only thing left of that 2006 team that Mets fans cherish. He came up with Reyes and they were both supposed to be in Flushing forever. Half of that dream has already been broken and Alderson needs to keep the other half intact.