Watching Ryan Zimmerman Homer Is Difficult For Mets Fans

In some ways, the careers of David Wright and Ryan Zimmerman are intertwined. It’s been that way since they were teenagers playing for the same AAU team in the Chesapeake Valley.

Both would be first round draft picks of their respective National League East franchises. They’d become cornerstone Gold Glove winning All-Star third basemen.

The comparisons would go further as both hit the first ever homer for their team in the their new ballparks. We’d also see both players become increasingly injury prone, and in 2016, it looked like the end.

Zimmerman would finally get healthy (relatively speaking), and he’d have a bit of a renaissance starting in 2017. As for Wright, aside from two games at the end of the 2018 season, he was done after the 2016 season.

That made the 2015 postseason Wright’s final hurrah. He’d had a big Game 1 of the NLDS against the Dodgers. That, along with Jacob deGrom‘s dominance, set the tone for a series the Mets would win in five winning the clincher at Dodger Stadium.

The Mets followed this by sweeping the Cardinals in the NLCS thereby allowing Wright to have his first and only shot at a World Series. The fates, and his manager, would conspire against him, but he’d still have a moment of glory:

Zimmerman’s postseason path has been eerily similar. The Nationals beat the Dodgers in five games in the NLDS winning the fifth game at Dodger Stadium. They’d then sweep an NL Central team (Cardinals) to win the pennant. Finally, Zimmerman would hit his own World Series homer:

Unfortunately, while the respective careers of Wright and Zimmerman have mirrored each other, there has been some separation beyond Zimmerman being able to continue his career.

The Lerners are all-in in getting a ring. That led to Zimmerman having more postseason shots than Wright. We’d also see Zimmerman’s team not waste a huge game from a young star (Juan Soto) like the Mets did (Michael Conforto).

Finally, tonight, Sean Doolittle did what Jeurys Familia couldn’t do. He saved Game 1 on the road giving the Nationals the lead in the series the Mets never had in 2015.

In the end, that’s what hurts most about Wright’s career. He never got the chances he deserved, and as a result, his career ended without a ring. We shall soon see if that’s the case with Zimmerman.

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