According to a scathing report by Marc Carig of Newsday, on more than one occasion, New York Mets owner and CEO Fred Wilpon stepped in to protect Terry Collins and keep him from getting fired as manager of the team despite a litany of gripes and grievances against him by Sandy Alderson and the front office.
Multiple team sources revealed that the clubhouse chemistry between the players and their manager had deteriorated this season and had become very frayed and fractured.
“He has always been difficult to communicate with,” one Met said. “It would be a surprise if he said ‘hey’ to you when you passed each other in the hallway if your name wasn’t Matt Harvey or Yoenis Cespedes. It’s always been those couple things along with some of the in-game decisions he makes.”
Said another Met: “We were all miserable.”
Terry Collins was also ignoring directives from the front office which included some very serious concerns with how he was mismanaging the bullpen and abusing his relievers at an alarming level.
“Once he falls in love with you, he abuses you,” an official said. “He has run players into the ground. He has no idea about resting players. Even when you tell him, he doesn’t listen.”
So it goes without saying that “Terry has no allies in the front office,” the official concluded.
The New York Mets are expected to part ways with Terry Collins after this season despite the manager’s intention not to retire. The 68-year old Collins says he’d like like to manage two more years.
I urge you to read Carig’s full report, but in all honesty is any of this really news? This shouldn’t have come as a surprise to anyone of our readers. I’ve written about Fred Wilpon’s cozy relationship with Terry Collins for years, including earlier this week in one of our comment threads.
And we already knew Sandy Alderson wanted to fire Terry Collins back in 2014, because he freaking said as much in his biography Baseball Maverick.
Another thing that is not surprising?
That this is yet another case of the Wilpons ordering the leaks of disparaging quotes about a player, coach, or manager that has left the organization or is on his way out.
I call it the Wilpon Whisper Campaign.
Woe to whomever is targeted by that Wilpon Whisper Campaign… By the time it gets through with you you’ll be known as a cancer and a pariah. The goal is to turn the fan base against whomever they target – and for the most part it usually works for them so they continue the tactic without mercy.
We’ve seen Carlos Beltran, Jose Reyes, Dillon Gee, Angel Pagan, and Justin Turner among others all get smeared and tarnished on their way out – most of it a pack of lies and innuendo to rile the fan base up. This is how the Wilpons have always operated ever since they took former majority owner Nelson Doubleday out of the picture.
You almost knew that a hit-list like this would come out today, even though most of this was well known by beat writers for months and years.
I say that because the Mets shockingly failed to give Terry Collins any kind of sendoff after managing what was likely his last game at Citi Field.
There was NOTHING…. No Gatorade shower, no clubhouse celebration, no video montage, not even a “Thank You Terry!” on the giant center field scoreboard. It had the Wilpons’ fingerprints all over it.
It’s a pretty shitty way to treat the longest tenured manager in franchise history – who took the team to two postseasons including the World Series in 2015.
I’ve had huge problems with Terry Collins over the years, including his mishandling of the bullpen, his crazy lineups, the way he handled the younger players and limited their playing time, his awful in-game strategy or lack thereof… there was always plenty of fodder.
I’ll be glad Terry Collins is gone… But he certainly didn’t need to be kicked in the ass and shoved to the ground on the way out. It’s freaking awful that he goes out like this.
Shame on you, Wilpons…. And shame on any of the beat writers who do their bidding.
