Plenty of people tried to stop David Wright this week.
Terry Collins and D.J. Carrasco tried to stop him on Tuesday night when Carrasco plunked Ryan Braun late in a blowout to churn up some bad blood against the Brewers. Collins took Wright out of the game, touching off a dugout argument for the ages and making for a day of discussion around these parts.
Pitchers for the Brewers and Reds tried to stop Wright as well over the last four days. Nothing too notable about that as pitchers try to get hitters out every night of the week, but they are part of the equation that was written to halt Wright's tear through the National League.
And, finally, those angry looking germs from medicine commercials took their shot at waylaying Wright. He was suffering from flu-like symptoms for Thursday's matinee with the Brewers and surely the combination of all those things in a short period of time would be too much for Wright to bear.
Nope. Wright was 2-for-2 with three walks and drove in the game-winning run in the Mets' 9-4 victory.
There were plenty of other notable performances for the Mets on Thursday. Ronny Cedeno hit a three-run homer, they rallied to post the first run of the season against Reds phenom Aroldis Chapman and the bullpen threw three shutout innings to help the team erase a 4-0 Cincinnati lead.
But it was Wright blasting the ball to deep center to score the go-ahead run in a raucous eighth inning. Wright's reaction to Collins' decision on Tuesday might have cemented his role as the team's leader, but his play has been the thing that's truly restored Wright's place at the top of the Mets' firmament.
Sports
The double left Wright's average at .411 this season, the best in all of baseball, and his 1134 OPS is a testament to how much damage he's been doing to pitching staffs through the first quarter of the season. The timing of Wright's return to full form couldn't have come at any better time.
Wright is making it extremely difficult for the Mets to do anything other than hand over a huge contract extension that will guarantee Wright goes down as both the best position player in Mets history and the only great Met to spend his entire career with the franchise. If they somehow swim against that tide and try to trade him, his value is skyrocketing thanks to the way he's played thus far.
We can't know whether or not the Mets' run, fueled as it is by improbable comebacks and the kindness of the opposition, will continue long enough to make them contenders. We can know that losing Jose Reyes, painful though it was, didn't take away the face of the franchise.
That belongs to Wright and it's unlikely we're going to forget it again anytime soon.
Josh Alper is a writer living in New York City. You can follow him on Twitter and he is also a contributor to Pro Football Talk.
