Is David Wright Becoming a Health Risk?

(ROB CARR/GETTY IMAGES)

With so much focus on the health of Mets’ pitching arms, both those returning from injury and those undergoing recent surgery, it can be taken for granted that their position players will always benefit from good health.

And that’s becoming an unsafe assumption to make, especially in the case of David Wright, who has been spending too much time sidelined by various injuries for several years now.

The sight of Wright limping off the field in the eighth inning of the Mets’ 6-5 win over the Phillies on Tuesday night immediately conjured speculation that he’d miss a month or more with a hamstring pull. The theory goes that if David Wright is limping off the field and leaving a game, he’s not going to come back any time soon, and Terry Collins pretty much echoed those sentiments in his post-game address.

Wright is 32. Since 2011, he’s been on the disabled list and missed significant time in each season–projected to include this one now–except for 2012. Wright played 102 games in 2011, 112 games in 2013 and 134 games last season, when he gamely tried to play through a painful shoulder that he refused to use as an excuse until he just couldn’t take it any longer in August.

And these, ominously, have been wear-and-tear type injuries, not traumatic ones. When a player like Michael Cuddyer gets hit in the hand by a pitch the way he did Tuesday night (a contusion, not a fracture), that is not a sign of a player’s age. Cuddyer’s 35, but anyone can get hurt by a misplaced fastball.

But Wright has been hit with a hamstring injury, a shoulder injury and another hamstring injury in less than two years now. At 32, he’s supposed to have several good years left, but all players age at different rates, and Mets fans can recall how quickly Keith Hernandez’ body broke down in a few quick stages between 1988, when he was 34, and 1990, when he played his final game with the Cleveland Indians.

Matt Harvey is spending April under the microscope, his every pitch analyzed to gauge his recovery from elbow surgery.

Whenever David Wright returns from his latest hamstring problem, he’ll go back under the microscope, too.