I’m one of the biggest Wilmer Flores fans you’ll ever know, but for crying out loud when will Terry Collins come to his senses and realize that he should only be limited to starting against left-handed pitchers and never, ever, should he be playing shortstop?
Why was Flores in the starting lineup on Wednesday given his incredibly awful numbers against right-handed pitching? And why was he playing shortstop when a perfectly adept Matt Reynolds was on the bench and riding back to back solid games since being called up on Monday?
Reynolds has played an excellent shortstop and he gets benched after going 4-for-8 with a double, a homer, two runs scored and four RBI in the first two games of the Subway Series? Why God, why?
At what point do Flores’ splits matter? He is batting a stagnating .209 /.274/.331 vs RHP this season while sporting a tremendous .348/.392/.696 triple-slash vs LHP.
Thanks to another questionable decision by Terry Collins that defied logic, Wilmer Flores does the predictable last night, striking out twice and snuffing out two potentially huge scoring rallies with inning ending double plays, leaving five runners stranded.
And on top of that, he muffs two plays at shortstop while lobbing another two lolly pops to James Loney at first base, all in all costing the Mets three of those Yankees runs just on defense.
Flores was a one-man wrecking crew in last night’s loss and that’s all on Collins who consistently sets up his players to fail rather than succeed. Now the Mets find themselves sitting at a season-high 8.5 games out of first place, while losing more precious ground in the Wild Card standings and allowing teams like the Rockies and Pirates to enter the fray which already had the Marlins and Cardinals ahead of us.
Whenever Collins is grilled about one of his eyebrow-raising lineup decisions, he almost always famously responds, “We needed to get Player X going.” I think it’s time Sandy Alderson gets Terry Collins going.
