David Wright to Chipper Jones: Just kidding.
A day after the Atlanta Braves star said the Mets third baseman told him he was frustrated by the spacious dimensions at Citi Field, Wright said his remarks shouldn’t be taken literally.
“That was me having a good time with Chipper because I saw the look on his face after, you know, hitting 800 feet worth of fly balls and no home runs,” Wright said Tuesday before the Mets played Philadelphia.
He homered his first time up, ending a 100 at-bat drought.
Jones was so fond of hitting at Shea Stadium that in 2004 he named a son Shea. He went 4-for-7 last month in his first two games at Citi Field, where 38 home runs were hit in the first 26 games, 18 by the Mets.
Entering Tuesday, only San Francisco’s AT&T Park (27), Pittsburgh’s PNC Park (32) and Atlanta’s Turner Field (34) allowed fewer home runs.
In the Braves’ 8-7, 12-inning win on May 13, Jones hit two of Atlanta’s seven doubles.
“It is the biggest park that I have ever played in in my life. It is a huge ballpark to center and right center and right field,” Jones told Sirius XM Radio on Monday. “You know, I actually feel sort of sorry for some of the guys out there because their power numbers are really going to take a hit; guys like David Wright, (Carlos) Beltran, (Carlos) Delgado. The days of them hitting 35, 40 homers — they’re over. I juiced the ball just right of center field as hard as the good Lord can let me hit a ball, and it hit midways up the center field wall for a double.
“And every time there was a long fly out or a double that hit off the wall or something, David Wright would run by me and go, ‘Nice park.’ He’s a little frustrated with it, but on the flip side of that, you got a guy like Jose Reyes who’s liable to hit, in a healthy year, 25, 30 triples in that ballpark because if you split a gap you can run forever.”
Wright hit a career-high 33 homers last year, 21 at Shea Stadium. He has three this season, two at Citi Field.
“It’s nice hitting home runs. It’s fun hitting home runs but, you know, those aren’t, you know, what I live and die by,” Wright said. “I’m not frustrated at all with this ballpark.”
Jerry Manuel said he thought Wright might have been playing mind games with Jones.
“I think a lot of times when players kind of talk to each other, they kind of use reverse psychology, make him feel like: ‘Hey, yeah, man, this is huge. Man, you can’t hit nothing out of here.'”
At Citi Field, the gap in right-center in 415 feet. The left-field fence is up to 15 feet, 8? inches, the center-field wall 16 feet and the right-field fence 18-6?.
Manuel said he hasn’t drawn any conclusions about the ballpark.
“I think it’s still too early for that,” he said. “I think that as we go through this season, we’ll begin to learn much more about the park and how it plays. And I think our guys will begin to become comfortable with the park.”