Terry Collins burst into the Mets’ clubhouse after a dreary loss and ripped into his players. He told them they needed to perform better and could not become deflated and give up when they fell behind in a game, as they just had. Minutes later, he repeated the message to reporters and said the team needed to go 9-2 over its next 11 games.
But this wasn’t Wednesday night, when Collins did something similar, berating his team, after a 9-3 loss to the Pittsburgh Pirates, and then barely controlling his anger as he answered questions from the news media.
This happened April 13, after a tough loss to the Colorado Rockies that left the Mets with a three-game losing streak. He was hoping his fiery words would inspire his players, but they did not. Instead, the Mets were swept in a doubleheader the next day, making a mockery of everything Collins intended.
The Mets also lost another doubleheader two days later, leaving them with seven losses in a row and a 4-11 record. Who knows how often during those two doubleheaders Collins wanted to storm back into the clubhouse and blow his stack again? But he couldn’t because his players might start tuning him out the way some did in Houston and Anaheim in his previous incarnations as a major league manager.
But the 62-year-old Collins cannot completely suppress the characteristics that make him who he is: an intense, combative, sometimes hot-headed and always hypercompetitive baseball man.
“Let me tell you something, I am who I am,” he said Thursday morning, less than 12 hours after he had put aside restraint and blistered his players again, after a late-inning implosion against the Pirates.
“I think I’ve matured through the years in being able to control things a little better,” he said. “But make no mistake about it, if we play Ping-Pong, I’m going to try to kick your butt. That competitiveness is still there, my desire to win, what I expect of my teams, is still there. That fire still burns inside, or I wouldn’t be here.”
His players seem to understand that, and as long as Collins limits his outbursts, say, to once every seven weeks, he should be fine. If Collins did not get it before, he understands it now. Nothing is worse for a manager than too many team meetings and too many clubhouse scoldings.
“We’re not going to have them often because they’ll end up turning you off and getting tired of hearing what you have to say,” Collins said of his players, and, in effect, all players. “Last night, they better understand it came from the heart.”
In this instance, his 25 Mets responded much better than they did in April, rallying from an early 7-0 deficit to beat the Pirates, 9-8, Thursday afternoon in their biggest comeback victory of the season.
In his angry address Wednesday night, he told his players they had to play better. He then marched into his news conference, vented his frustrations with the Mets’ recent fortunes, in which they repeatedly handed away late-game leads, and claimed changes would come.
The biggest indication that Collins was speaking out of sheer frustration was his declaration to reporters that he was “running out of ideas.” No manager readily admits that. And after he finished venting, he met with General Manager Sandy Alderson, and they discussed the very limited options either has to make the team better.
“He knew I was unhappy,” Collins said of Alderson on Thursday. “We talk so much. I think he was probably glad I let some of it out. He didn’t say that. We kind of talked about how to fix the team, more than anything.”
Perhaps the only thing that is going to fix the Mets is time. The Mets have been playing without the injured Ike Davis and David Wright for weeks now. Angel Pagan was out for a month. Johan Santana is still not close to returning. Chris Young is gone for the season. The Mets’ talent level did not scare their rivals before the season began, and injuries have only made things worse.
To fill the gaps, the Mets have turned to Willie Harris, Jason Pridie and Justin Turner. To Dillon Gee and Ruben Tejada and Nick Evans. Collins does not want anyone to make the excuse that a chunk of the Mets’ roster began the season at Class AAA Buffalo. These are, he might point out, the same players who beat the Yankees, 2-1, in the Bronx on May 20.
But Collins indicated Thursday that he was getting the sense that some of his recruits might have started wondering if they are over their heads in the majors. He said he also looked into the faces of some players and felt a sense of resignation.
“You walk out to the mound to take the pitcher out and you look at the faces around you and you can see that, ‘Oh God, here we go,’ ” Collins said. “That’s what I want to stop. That’s the second meeting I’ve had to stop that. We’ve got to stop that.”
During his diatribe with reporters on Wednesday, Collins singled out Pirates outfielder Andrew McCutchen as an example of someone playing hard and doing things right.
On Thursday, McCutchen said he had heard that Collins referred to him, and said he was proud to be noticed.
But McCutchen said he took no enjoyment from the fact he was a catalyst for another manager’s outburst.
“We’ve been there before, plenty of times,” he said of his own club. “It happens to all of us.”
So far, it has happened to the 2011 Mets once every seven weeks, which, for a streaky team four games under .500, is just about right.
Published by: DAVID WALDSTEIN
Filed under: Sports news Tagged: | Baseball Season, MBL
