PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. -- The first of many conversations took place Wednesday morning in the Tradition Field clubhouse. Terry Collins, who has the final say in all of this, insisted that David Wright take things slowly this spring. Wright absorbed it, digested it and shared his own feelings.
The two men did not put pen to paper on a goal for games played, hours rested or anything of that nature. They simply had a discussion, as adults, of what's best for Wright in his first full season battling spinal stenosis.
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"Everybody keeps asking about a plan. You can't have a plan," Wright said. "I wanted to know what Terry's expectations of me were this spring, and I think he's trying to kind of feel out what I feel comfortable with right now. I think the biggest thing is just I'm going to have to listen to the way my body feels. I'm going to have to be honest with him."
"It went great because he's David Wright," Collins said of the conversation. "We set down the fact that the only thing we have to consider is making sure he gets ready. That did not include giving him any particular number of at-bats in Spring Training, but the process involved that it's going to take to make sure when he gets into games here in Spring Training, he's 100-percent ready to go."
Earlier this month, general manager Sandy Alderson suggested that Wright will play in around 130 games during the regular season. But all parties involved have been adamant in defining that statement as a guess -- nothing more. The truth is the Mets won't know what Wright is capable of doing until he ramps up his activity, which he plans on doing slowly this spring. The idea is to ease Wright into Grapefruit League games, then accelerate his pace later in March. If they need to give him extra at-bats in Minor League games along the way, so be it.
Should all go according to plan, Wright hopes to prevent a serious injury from interrupting his season for the first time since 2012.
"It's unrealistic to try to predict what's going to happen," he said. "As I've experienced so far, you never know how you're going to feel."