In the aftermath of R.A. Dickey’s struggles against Washington yesterday — and an all-too typical inability to take advantage of run scoring opportunities — the New York Mets have a 3-4 record after a week of baseball, a mark that causes the Star-Ledger’s Dave D’Alessandro to essentially declare manager Terry Collins (above) a lame duck. And a rather pathetic one at that (“for a guy in his first big-league gig in 12 years, Collins is not exactly in a position to complain”). Though D’Alessandro solicits Davey Johnson and Pedro Beato for quotes that would support the notion Collins is doomed, his failure to collect such in way changes the tenor of the evisceration :
Never mind that Collins is a mere stopgap. It hardly matters that everyone knows Sandy Alderson is basically using Collins to (cliché alert) change the culture for a few years before he can put the team in a position to moneyball its way back into your heart.
Their first home game looked like some virus left behind by Jerry Manuel. Too many walks. Too many failures to move runners. Too many guys left stranded with two out. Too many line drives that found gloves. Too many bullpen failures, because one is too many.
Hours earlier, Collins had rhapsodized about how his goal is to make all those families that showed up Friday remember this experience, and take home with them a lasting memory of men doing noble work.
It was cloyingly sappy stuff, but somehow endearing: “I want all the fathers to say to their sons, ‘That’s the way the game should be played’ — win or lose.”
The oddest thing about it was, the manager meant every word of it.
The second oddest thing about it was, it already feels like he’s running out of chances to leave a positive impression.