Red Pill vs. Blue Pill: David Wright or Matt Harvey stay healthy?

Laurence Fishburne presents you with two options. He’s wearing sunglasses, a dark jacket, and calling himself Morpheus, but the options are what intrigue you most. Isn’t this Cowboy Curtis? Don’t bother trying to assess the situation. You have a tough call to make on behalf of New York Mets history.

You must take a pill. One is red. The other is blue.

Take the red pill and David Wright never has spinal stenosis or any of the other injuries in the latter part of his career. He’s healthy, for the most part. Take the blue and Matt Harvey doesn’t see his career take a turn for the worse because of thoracic outlet syndrome or anything else after the 2015 World Series. Which do you pick?

NY Mets fans get to choose: a healthy David Wright or Matt Harvey

It’s probably not such a tough choice, is it? Wright was far and away the better player and more important to the franchise’s history. Other than Tom Seaver, is there anyone else more important to the team’s success?

Consider another factor. We did get to see many years of Wright as one of the best third basemen in baseball. It never got the Mets a championship. Would things have gone differently if Harvey was the one able to stay healthy? Could he, alongside Jacob deGrom, Noah Syndergaard, and Zack Wheeler in 2019 have been a strong enough foursome to carry the ball club?

Harvey was as ready to have the kind of career from the mound that Wright did as a position player for the Mets. His 2012 and 2013 campaigns hold up. Even the 2015 season, when he laid it all on the line in the postseason, is one of the better pitched seasons in Mets history.

Choosing the red pill is easy because it’s Wright. It’s safer knowing what kind of a difference he could have made for the Mets in his later years. He alone wouldn’t have carried the Mets past the Kansas City Royals in the 2015 World Series. Maybe things would have ended up better in 2016.

Those who swallow the blue pill might be a little more adventurous. Personally, I believe you’re more likely to have seen a championship as a result.