Numbers don’t matter. What the Mets look at and concern themselves with in David Wright’s latest minor league rehabilitation in an attempt to make it back to the majors are the simplest aspects.
“At this stage, it’s more about the physical. It’s not about the baseball. It’s just seeing, can he get out there and play the game?” assistant general manager John Ricco said Monday before the Mets began a homestand that started with the Giants following a 7-4 road trip.
“Don’t worry about the results, it’s just the physical playing the game and then do it again the next day and then do it again two more times,” Ricco said. “And that’s what this progression is about.”
So Ricco spoke with tempered optimism about the future for Wright, who has undergone multiple surgeries as he continues a long, arduous journey back from spinal stenosis since his last major league at-bat on May 27, 2016.
Wright has been working in the final days of the minor league season with Class-A St. Lucie. In six games he is 2-of-17 with a minimum of five innings played each game at third. Both hits came Sunday. So yeah, ditch the numbers. The Mets eventually want to move him to Double- or Triple-A, but they’re going one step at a time.
“He hadn’t seen pitching for a long, long time,” Ricco said. “And he faced some decent prospects throwing 96, 97 [mph]. Your body, it’s hard to simulate that.”
And don’t try to pinpoint on a calendar when or where Wright will be next.
“We only had 20 days in the minor leagues so we had to kind of push him as far as we could to get to the point where now we use the [time] to see how he reacts,” Ricco said. “And then your guess is as good as mine right now as to what that’s going to look like in two weeks.”
Wright, 35, hopes to rejoin the Mets this season but nothing is certain. He recently told The Post during his Florida rehab this shot at a comeback just might be his last if he doesn’t make it back before season’s end.
“There will certainly be some things to think about. I haven’t quite thought that far. My goal is certainly to make it back, and if it doesn’t work out … at some point you have got to play. You can’t just continue to sit here and rehab all year,” Wright said. “It’s been over two years, so at some point if physically I can do it, great, and if physically I can’t, that’s a whole different conversation.”
So the Mets look at just whether or not Wright is simply capable of playing. You don’t ask a runner to do a marathon after two years of inactivity.
“It’s still day-to-day. He’s been out for quite a long time so seeing almost on a daily basis how his body reacts and each game presents different challenges whether he has to dive, how many plays, how much time he spends running the bases,” Ricco said, noting Wright handled his first week “pretty well.”
Ricco was asked about Wright’s throwing. Suffice to say the Mets captain probably didn’t wow anybody there. Again, think progress measured in inches.
“It’s like everything else. He’s been out two years so he’s working his way back. We’re talking to the manager down there after every game. It’s still baby steps at this point,” Ricco said. “Maybe in the next few weeks we’ll have a better sense of that. But right now it’s a little bit too early.”
So no one is in any rush. Wright began a rehab assignment in Florida last year on Aug. 23 and had to pull the plug on Aug. 28.
“We’ll see how he looks in a couple weeks when we’re at the end of this time period. We all know that we have a certain number of days we can use on a rehab. At some point the rosters expand so we’ll have to make a decision there,” Ricco said. “But right now, we’re taking it day-to-day.”