I’ve never quite wrapped my mind around the notion that Terry Collins is the right manager for these NY Mets. I have my reasons, mostly grounded in my skepticism about his handling of a very young impressionable group that could benefit from a more patient and supportive hand …
But while it’s hard to complain about a first place team with a 15 – 6 record, there are looming questions about Terry Collins and his role, including some speculation that the front office has further degraded the latitude of his authority.
The Mets are currently run by a brain-trust known for employing unorthodox principles. Sandy Alderson broke ground in Oakland by constructing on-field statistical composites in the aggregate – through overlooked and undervalued qualities, i.e., market inefficiencies. We know all this because Micheal Lewis wrote a book about it called Moneyball — some of you may have heard of it.
But beyond the sabermetric savvy there are several other precepts that Sandy Alderson brought with him from the west coast. Namely a Weaveresque reliance on getting on base and hitting homeruns, and the devitalization of the manager’s role in player-personnel proceedings — moving the center of the decision making apparatus decidedly upstairs.
When the story came out about Sandy Alderson and his 51% (or less) chance of retaining Collins earlier this spring (via Steve Kettmann’s Maverick), Collins found himself in the unenviable position of having to defend his relationship with his boss in front of the press. But the facts speak for themselves, there was the infamous “closed door” meeting late last year from which Collins emerged with the revelation that Wilmer Flores was his starting shortstop, and beyond that, there were numerous instances where Collins and the front office did not appear to be on the same chapter, let alone on the same page.
Much of the disconnect involved playing time allocation. Collins insisted on “winning games” by plugging in veteran assets, while the front office continually relayed a narrative promoting an evaluative youth movement.
The argument over who exactly makes up the lineup card flared up again this spring when several stories trickled down about some of the sabermetric principles behind the Met lineups. The commotion over this in the media prompted Alderson himself to hand Terry Collins a lineup card during a press conference as a joke … but you know what they say, behind every joke there’s some truth.
Terry Collins has been around quite a long time, acquiring what I am sure must be a wealth of baseball knowledge. I think on some things the manager and front office agree — they both tend to under-utilize and under-appreciate “small ball” stratagems such as the hit and run, the squeeze, and the stolen base in general. It’s when respective biases conflict that we run into trouble.
From the beginnings of the Wilmer Flores experiment it was clear that Collins had misgivings about his ability to be a major league shortstop. Undoubtedly, as a diminutive middle infielder himself, he saw the position as necessitating a range and quickness the slow and lanky Flores did not and could not possess. This ran contrary to the front office bias that defense, while certainly a consideration, should take a back seat to offensive output in the grand scheme of what wins games.
The perception that Collins dislikes Flores has gained steam in fan circles and comment boards, fueled by his initial reluctance to play him at short and his subsequent insistence on hitting him in the eighth spot – which is not exactly conducive to Wilmer’s latent run producing predilections. Last night there were at least a dozen entries on our very own MMO game-thread lamenting Collins’ “hatred” of Flores.
It brings up two interesting points. First of all, is it really possible for the front office to remotely dictate lineups when a team is on the road? Yes, the front office can push recommendations, but ultimately the Manager has to have veto rights in the event a player sustains a late injury or becomes ill. Flores got nailed by a pitch on his right ankle during the last game of the Yankee series, could it be it was barking and needed a rest? Seems plausible. Secondly, is Collins really on board with Flores as his everyday shortstop?
Collins does at times appear to be resisting the idea of Flores as an integral part of his infield and his lineup, and it’s strange because I don’t think it has anything to do with Collins “hating” Flores … Wilmer does after all come off as an even keeled quiet sort of kid. I think it has more to do with how stubborn Collins is. It’s probably difficult for a guy with as much experience as Terry to acquiesce to directives on playing time (which of course necessitated the closed door Flores meeting in the first place), because it more than likely goes against his baseball acumen.
This chronic disconnect with the front office can’t possibly be a good thing for a team and an organization that prides itself on uniformity of purpose across levels … At the very least it’s distracting, creating a virtual field-day for the press every time it occurs, at worst it speaks to a breakdown in communication that can compromise chain-of-command proceedings.
So Collins doesn’t see Flores as a shortstop, ok … That’s not a problem in and of itself — lots of headstrong and set-in-their-ways individuals have a hard time with being told they are wrong … At issue is whether Terry Collins is toeing the company line and truly doing everything he can to fit what he see’s as a square peg into a round hole, or is he (consciously or not) casting aspersions on the process itself and throwing wrenches in the kid’s development path to essentially prove his own point? All in the guise of doing what he believes will help the team win?
I guess that’s one for the front office.
