New York Mets: An Early Vote for Terry Collins as Manager of the Year

Terry Collins is a baseball lifer who toiled for years in a variety of positions before he got his chance to manage the team he wanted in the New York Mets. As such, he is familiar with adversity as the path to success. No one has faced more adversity as a manager this season than Collins. Joe Maddon may win it, but Collins deserves the NL Manager of the Year Award.

It would be fair to say that when the 2016 season began, no one was more giddy about the prospects for his team than Terry Collins. The “Five Aces” were poised and ready to conquer all as the premier starting staff in all of baseball. The New York Mets, after losing to the Royals in the World Series, were ready to grab what they had been denied and repeat what Kansas City had done in winning the title the following year after losing themselves the previous season.

That was the story then and we all know what the story is now. The Mets are no more than a ragtag shell of the team they brought north in April. Injuries have decimated the entire team and the “five ” are now down to two. And one of those is the oldest pitcher in baseball and the other continues to hold on pitching with bone spurs in his young arm.

Injuries Pile Up

The last time team captain David Wright put on a uniform was back in the first week of June. One half of the power in their lineup disappeared in May when Lucas Duda went down. And even the players that Collins was counting on and weren’t injured, like Travis d’Arnaud and the veteran power hitter Curtis Granderson struggled.

Through it all, Collins remained as the stabilizing, if not always calm, force behind the Mets even as ownership and upper management (GM Sandy Alderson) refused to bring in reinforcements from outside the organization.

The Terry Collins Philosophy

So, he did what the “old schoolers” in baseball do. You pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and get back in there. See, Terry Collins has a credo and it says that if you are wearing a major league uniform, then you are expected to play like a major league ballplayer is expected to play. And it doesn’t matter who you are or what your name is.

So when Terry Collins walks into the clubhouse and sees yet another unfamiliar face like a Seth Lugo, he doesn’t panic. He simply says to him, “Okay, you’re my starting pitcher tonight. Go out there and do your thing.” Same with another no-name, Robert Gsellman. And he does it again when second baseman Neil Walker and more recently Wilmer Flores go down with season-ending injuries, tagging another no-name T.J. Rivera as his everyday second baseman. T.J. who? The guy who’s hitting .340, that’s who. And it’s been that way for four months now.

It hasn’t been all peaches and roses for Terry Collins though. He’s also had to contend with almost daily calls for his head from the media, and especially from the talking heads on New York radio. And sometimes, Collins showed a bit of fire in his blood. In probably the most reported incident, he lambasted his team for the only real mortal sin in baseball, a lack of effort.

But even then, Collins came off as a genius because it was right after that tirade that his team began to play a brand of baseball that now has them on the cusp of earning a playoff berth. Terry Collins is not a genius, though, and he does sometimes make in-game decisions that cause you to scratch your head. He’s open to charges of being reckless with his bullpen, too, as he’s got two pitchers (Addison Reed and Jeurys Familia) who will both appear in more than half of the games played by the Mets.

But that in-game stuff pales in comparison to what Terry Collins is as a people person and a player’s manager. He gets the most out of what he has. And that’s the barometer that all leaders should be measured by.

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Joe Maddon would be the odds-on favorite to win the thing, but Terry Collins should be the man to carry the Manager of the Year Award home with him after the season is over. Maddon has faced little if any adversity this year in guiding the Cubs to a 100+ win season. Collins, on the other hand, has faced nothing but adversity. And for that alone, he deserves the recognition that comes with the award.

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