9:29pm: Puma and colleague Joel Sherman add more context to the story, reporting that Collins was on the brink of being fired last season when Fred Wilpon intervened. The Mets went on to rally and make a Wild Card appearance, which helped Collins’ cause. Alderson & Co. were also debating a managerial change at multiple points this season, per the Post duo.
Puma and Sherman add that Collins’ heavy usage of Familia early in the year flew directly in the face of advice from the front office. They also note that the absence of David Wright and the trade of Curtis Granderson removed two of the team’s most important veterans in terms of maintaining clubhouse order.
9:00pm: In a revealing, must-read piece for Newsday, Marc Carig reports that owner Fred Wilpon protected manager Terry Collins from being dismissed by COO Jeff Wilpon and general manager Sandy Alderson at multiple times over the course of Collins’ seven-year tenure as the team’s skipper. There have been multiple reports suggesting that Collins may not be back with the team in 2018, and the New York Post’s Mike Puma recently reported that if the decision is made to move on from Collins, the elder Wilpon isn’t likely to veto the decision this time around.
Carig cites “more than a dozen team insiders” in reporting that Collins has lost favor in the front office due to a lack of responsiveness to analytics, his overworking of multiple relievers and a clubhouse in which he’s lost control. As Carig points out, Collins rode Jerry Blevins, Addison Reed, Fernando Salas, Hansel Robles and Jeurys Familia extremely hard in the season’s first six to seven weeks; there were 21 non-Mets pitchers that had five or more appearances on zero days of rest by mid-May, while each of those five had already had five or more such outings. One club official tells Carig that Collins “abuses” relievers by overworking them and simply “doesn’t listen” when approached by the front office about extra rest for the ‘pen.
Moreover, Carig spoke to a number of unnamed Mets players that suggested that Collins made his preference to give playing time to veterans over rookies perfectly clear. When the Mets traded away most of their veterans in July and August, the clubhouse was comprised largely of younger players who “had grown to resent the manager,” Carig writes. One Mets player states that Collins has always been “difficult” to communicate with, and another more bluntly tells Carig that following the wave of summer trades: “We were all miserable.”
Beyond Collins, the future of both pitching coach Dan Warthen and hitting coach Kevin Long is uncertain. Warthen’s potential exit has been reported on previously (most recently by Puma), and Carig writes that it’s not clear if Long would remain with the club if he’s not given consideration for a potential managerial vacancy. Carig’s column contains quotes from numerous team officials and players alike and shines plenty of new light on the disconnect between the dugout and front office.
Whad’ya expect. He’s an old school dude.
I expect much wisdom from “old dude”. Old man live longer than most of us, more experience than most of us, so know more than most of us. Very scary Terry should be a great manager by this logic, but is this logic flawed?
‘Scary Terry’
That’s no excuse. Look at Joe Maddon – he’s “old” but has always embraced new ideas and innovations. Collins simply is not a good manager period.
Madden may be great at embracing new ideas etc. and not taking anything away from his achievements, but let’s face facts: Aside from his first couple seasons in Tampa he’s had the benefit of talented rosters and system depth.
Spellcheck!
Maddon.
Every good manager has thr benefit of good players, goofball.
Terrible managers always lead their team to WS appearances when they are expected to be only mediocre.
I’d bet that Cardinal Fans would be willing to send “New School” Matheny to the Mets “for a couple tickets to The Met” and a Ham Sandwich (with cheese, of course….lol)
Collins might be “old school”, but Matheny is a terrible manager. Players don’t like him, and fans can’t stand him. Overuse of relievers is his specialty also, so it must be an “all school tactic”.
Both Need To Be Fired!
(The Cards had a chance to sign Terry Francona instead of hiring Matheny………just let that sink in for a few minutes….)
It’s nice to hear the truth for a change. Baseball news that’s unfiltered and raw, what a concept. And who can put a spin on it? It’s coming from the owner.
We’re snakebitten, baby.
Talk about scapegoating a lower level employee for the wrongs of those above him.
Would the Mets F.O. have been happier if Collins had run high pitch counts on young arms? Were the F.O. concerned enough to give Collins the depth he needed or far more important, a lineup with talent top to bottom so a fifth inning lead of one run did not have to be preserved at any cost?
Look at the Mets farm bonuses paid to sign talent foreign and domestic over the past dozen years. It’s not just the payroll where Fred Wilpon skims money like Sammy Gravano.
You do realize that the Mets have gone over their slotted international money in three of the last 5 years and either dealt for more money, or stayed below the penalty threshold.
Probably a garbage story. Hard to believe a writer when they only use the word “source”. Could be this guy has an ax to grind with Collins and this is how he gets back at him.
Exactly, I’d never print this if ran a website like this. I wouldn’t want to be responsible for contributing to the slander of somebody’s reputation.
All of the information in here are baseballs worst kept secrets. Anyone with an ear to the ground in baseball knows Fred Wilpon has guarded Collins from falling on his sword, and that Collins is a poor clubhouse and on-field manager.
Heck, Conforto broke out in spite of Collins.
If any of this is a surprise to anyone, they haven’t been paying attention.
Every insider bit ever has been reported as “source”. You don’t throw your sources under the bus by printing their names.
Precisely. Naming sources is the surest route to making sure those sources aren’t sources anymore. And without those sources, we don’t get fed what we crave.
I crave Fred Wilpon’s imprisonment but no one is writing anything to make that happen.
Let’s hope they include Jeff if someone does…
I’m not a fan of TMZ-style reporting at all. Unless “unnamed” or “inside” sources are named, I don’t like when somebody’s reputation gets damaged via anonymity.
At the same time, this is a youth-oriented game and Collins just has no role in it anymore. This is the world we live in; even outside of baseball, older people are being pushed out of jobs they’ve held for decades so they can be replaced by the youth.
It’s sad when you’re useless in the baseball world, but life goes on.
The Mets just need their starting pitching to be healthy…
Exactly. Given their injuries, blame the front office and medical staff too. Enough blame to go around. Who was TC suppose to give the ball to?
/sarcasm
We Want Wally.
Keep Terry and Staff,Fire the Owners !
Fred and Jeff Wilpon.
GTFO!
And the whole saga gets more and more Bushleague…
Out of all the new york newspapers, I find NYPost’s coverage of their metropolitan teams to be the most negative from headlines to content. (Tone and style)
Almost everytime I read that newspaper (NYpost) on (Yankees), I feel like it’s written by our friends the Boston Globe, rather than our hometown newspaper.
This is my personal opinion, and I don’t get the same feeling when I read NY Daily News, and NYTimes Yankees coverage. I don’t feel the same way about their tone and style.
Mets are just easy targets because of their “downer” season. It’s a shame NYDailyNews was the newspaper sold for $1 this month (and $30M+ in liabilities) and not the NYPost.
The Post is a disgusting specimen of yellow journalism.
Then tell the uppers to stop drafting injury prone starters, invest money into legit starters, look at that staff.. injury prone af obv you havta overuse rp. This isn’t the managers fault as much as it is the front office who gave him this putrid roster.
How would you suggest that they identify “legit starters”, who won’t get hurt?
You do realize (I hope) that there’s a relatively NEW Methodology of teaching pitching mechanics out there, and that it’s quite effective in gaining velocity and movement, but it’s physically devastating to their arms…..over a fairly short span. The results are good enough (and money flows enough) to convince young players to adopt the mechanics…..but they are like “ticking time bombs” waiting to break.
Go to twitter and search for Chris O’Leary……he’s the expert.
Now Wally Backman can be hired as the manager with McDowell as pitching coach and Dykstra as first base/outfield coach and recreation director.
And, since he’s so knowledgeable in the booth, Hernandez can be bench coach.
What a crew that’d be!
Hard to believe there are 24 comments so far on an article about Mets firings and not one of them trumpeting that tired old “Fire the training staff” refrain.
I hope he retires this year. I feel like they would’ve been much better the past couple of years without him. I don’t think managers can really win you games, but they can definitely lose them. And it feels like he always found a way to lose a lot of winnable games.
So you think they would have won both the World Series in 2015 and the WC game last year if Collins wasn’t around? You think that another manager could have done better with 7 starters hitting the DL in one year, his closer getting suspended and his star LF, his 1B, and his 2B spending as much time on the DL as off?
Hey Goat–he’s not going into the sunset gracefully, now begging to keep his job, that he only is still employed at because he said he was
Going to retire and they let him stay to be nice.
The decision to keep Collins paid off handsomely in 2015 and 2016 when they went to the WS and WC game respectively. This year the team was decimated by injuries and there is not a manager alive that could have gotten that team anywhere close to the playoffs.
You are out in left field if you don’t mention that he is partly responsible for many of the injuries. His 2015 and 2016 mismanagement of pitchers caused the staff to be decimated by injuries. So on one hand he won–though NO World Series crowns; and on the other hand he burned through the talented “dream team”pitching staff. This collection of pitchers has not won 100 games together and none will be HOF candidates as all predicted like the ’90s versions of ATL staff.
He is the man in charge. Live by the sword and die by the sword, plain and simple.
If I hadn’t already felt bad for Terry, reading these articles would have done the job. Blaming him for Familia’s blood clot seems particularly unfair — what manager doesn’t use their closer in non-save situations or on back-to-back days?
He deserved a better ending to his tenure, and I wish him well.
What’s your next team optimist?
It’s pretty clear Collins is not the guy for the Mets right now… he doesn’t mesh with the FO and he’s not a rebuild-and-grow manager… but I think it’s a little dramatic to say he blew up the entire team all by himself.
No. Just blew up all the young arms by pushing them past sensible innings limits
Sell this damn team already
It’s such a healthy organization. Really encourages loyalty to watch the Flushing Follies as there is nothing on this site not anywhere on MLB that has such awesome drama.
Get out the rocker chairs. Buy a set of 3 for wilpon senior, sandy and “TC”. Junior is sent for detention as an impotent leader in a family business.
Is Collins a guy that would be helpful for another franchise,if let go?
I expect he’s about done coaching/managing. However, if give a chance to do “what he’s best at”, would he be useful for a team in developing young pitchers/hitters/defenders?
If (insert any veteran baseball guy) helps one dude get markedly better to that pipeline, he’s of huge value.
For instance, if Collins goes to the Red Sox, and helps make a player who would otherwise be a 1.7 value into a 3.8 value, that also fetches (due to Collins) a decent deadline addition at a deadline arm that adds to a WS title, Collins is a nice add for Boston.
He would be as good an add in Boston, following up his stylish Mets career as Bobby Valentine. Let’s stop romanticizing his accomplishments as “TC” took over a team with a very deep and fertile stockpile of pitchers that were recruited and developed by Omar Manaya