Following last night’s 16-1 defeat to the Phillies, the New York Mets (spoilers of nothing other than their fans’ interest in baseball) received a no confidence vote of sorts from manager Terry Collins, who upon being asked if he charges had quit, told his postgame interrogators, “You’ll have to ask them. I have my own opinion. I’m not going to express it publicly.” Quoted today by ESPN New York’s Adam Rubin, Collins insists, “I still believe in them.” If he’s not lying, he’s the only person who does.
“We know we’re going through a tough time,” Collins said. “I’m very proud of this team, the way they played all year. The one thing I will never, ever talk about is their effort. Their effort has always been there. If you saw, Dan Murphy last night hit two double-play balls and ran both of them as hard as he can to first. I’ve seen guys break up double plays, take extra bases. That’s not the issue. The issue has been, as a manager you sit here and you try to fix it. You try to figure out how to fix it. And you pull out all your stops. No matter what you’ve done in the past, you try to find an answer to it. When you don’t have the answers anymore, it’s frustrating.
“So, as I sat there on the bench last night, I was saying, ‘What’s my next move?’ I thought maybe they need to know — everybody’s frustrated, but let’s just see who’s willing to rise up again and give it another shot. And so I probably did it the wrong way. But I believe in what we do here. We’re going to grind it out on a daily basis.”