The Terry Collins era was always going to go down as the bridge to brighter days. How else could you explain Sandy Alderson making Collins his first manager with the track record he possessed three years ago? Collins oversaw teams collapse in Houston and Anaheim, with the latter resulting in a mutiny. He was well-placed as a minor-league field coordinator, and could still be valuable in such a role for an organization going forward. The [...]

Where would this team be without Matt Harvey? Is it safe to say that as of this moment, the only proven and legit core player under the age of 30 this team has is The Dark Knight of Gotham? I like Jon Niese a lot, but is he a core player? Or just an number three pitcher who plays the role of an ace on a very bad team? I quickly threw some numbers into [...]

It must have been fate that I happened to be in my car at 1:00 pm yesterday. After listening to WFAN’s Mike Francesa, I see the other side to this Valdespin issue – in fact it goes beyond Valdespin. I only was in the car long enough to hear his opening monologue, but you know what? He was dead on. Look, Valdespin is a jerk – he’s an immature bench player who constantly finds himself [...]

Jordany Valdespin has his flaws and it has nothing to do with his race. He could be Caucasian, African American, Pacific Islander, doesn’t matter … he’s had trouble with insubordination in virtually every stop on his way to the majors. He picked a fight with Ike Davis and Justin Turner for a prank they had absolutely nothing to do with, he took a silly picture wearing a Marlins cap and put it up on twitter, [...]

Now that I’ve had some time to cool off, I was wondering how the rest of the Mets blogosphere was reacting to Spin-Gate and was surprised to find little to nothing about it on MetsBlog or anywhere else for that matter. Could it be I’m just overreacting? It wouldn’t be the first time… However I did learn the Mets are recalling reliever Greg Burke because the Mets bullpen is overworked. It’s only May 11th, and [...]

This is getting utterly ridiculous… According to Adam Rubin of ESPN New York, Mets Manager Terry Collins said that he could see the Pirates retaliating against Jordany Valdespin for his admiration of his ninth-inning homer on Friday night, but added that he doesn’t think Pittsburgh would go after David Wright. “I think every situation is different. I don’t think you retaliate on David Wright,” Collins said. “You don’t take it out on David Wright. Now will they [...]

Las Vegas manager Wally Backman believes Zack Wheeler‘s big league promotion could be about two weeks away, according to a report by Adam Rubin on ESPN New York. “Personally, I think if he has a couple of more starts like his last start he’ll be headed to the big leagues, and rightfully so,” Backman told Las Vegas’ ESPN radio affiliate. We’ll have our Las Vegas beat writer Rob Silverman on hand Saturday when Wheeler takes the mound [...]

As of now, Terry Collins’ job is safe and deservedly so. Based on getting the most out of what he has been given and basic fairness, there’s nothing justifying Collins’ job being in question. However, fairness is irrelevant in sports. A manager’s job security always becomes an issue when he has lame duck contractual status and his team has lost six straight games.Losing streaks get everybody edgy, with questions directed to management, in this case, GM Sandy [...]

Kristie Ackert of the Daily News had a nice piece yesterday about Bobby Parnell and his being the closer of the 2013 New York Mets. Parnell was called in to close out the ninth on Monday in the series opener against the Marlins and failed to shut the door, leading to a 15-inning affair and an eventual loss. Due to the fact that the Mets young closer threw two innings and 35 pitches, Terry Collins opted [...]

John Charles Bradbury, an Economics Professor at Kennesaw State University, did a fascinating study a few years back on whether changing managers really has an effect on turning a team around. What he found was that ultimately managers had little to no effect on performance output given the same personnel. In a nutshell, good players make good managers. The only real difference was one of perception, from about 2000 on, there was a slight increase [...]

You know I bet you could build a supercomputer that would be able to manage the NY Mets. Maybe something like the robot from Lost in Space. A robot would probably have put in Juan Lagares instead of Collin Cowgill in the late innings last night … That’s because robots are nothing if not logical. Robots don’t go on intuition or hunches, they don’t make bullpen decisions based on their gut … Their guts are wires and blinking lights [...]