A team that has gone through as much as the 2016 Mets have so far this season would have every right to panic. A year prior, appearing in a World Series, only to see the next year seem like a lost one due to mounting injuries. Larry Brooks of the NY Post looks at how Terry Collins has been the perfect manager for the job at hand.
Collins’ no-panic attitude has helped this team. Regardless of the amount of bad fortune these Mets have seen over the course of this season, he was never ready to throw in the towel or produce a “woe is me” attitude.
“The minute [players] sense panic in the manager, the minute they sense panic in the coaches, they panic,” Collins said.
“I don’t care if they’re veterans or if they’re young guys. It is what it is, you have to deal with it, but the only thing that matters is the attitude in that room, and that is to stay positive as much as you can.”
For a team who has a near All-Star caliber group on the disabled list, it is incredible that they are just one game out of a Wild Card spot at this juncture of the season. With losses of David Wright, Matt Harvey, Lucas Duda, Zack Wheeler and most recently Neil Walker, not to mention all the nagging injuries to the starting rotation and some position players, this team has persevered.
“I think it starts here,” Collins said when asked if he or the club’s veteran leadership core is responsible for establishing a tone in the face of adversity. “I know you guys think I blow a lot of smoke, but I still think that’s how you have to do it. You walk in every day as if it’s a new day. You can’t worry about yesterday.”
“Just like the other day, we won the game and were heading into Sept. 1, and yeah, the Sept. 1 callups were coming, but the one thing I told those guys was how impressed I was with the fact that we’re starting September in a pennant race. There’s nothing like it because they didn’t let down or get down and kept it going.”
These Mets are resilient if nothing else. They have quelled storm after storm and yet stay afloat heading into the final four weeks of the season. You never hear of any complaining in the clubhouse, no anonymous quotes from players throwing the manager or anyone else under the bus. These players love and play hard for Collins. Maybe he really is the perfect manager for this team.
