This article was previously written by former MMO writer Jacob Resnick.
I always felt like Terry Collins got the short end of the stick.
Sure, his bullpen usage was questionable. His lineup construction caused frequent head-scratching, yes. But I never felt that it was fair to throw the blame on Collins for having to trot out Jason Bay 175 times over two years or hand the ball to Rafael Montero over 50 times across four seasons. Any way you slice it, when Collins finally had 25 major league caliber players in his clubhouse at the same time, they won.
The one area that isn’t up for debate when it comes to dissecting Collins’ strengths and weaknesses as a manager is his voice. Never shy in trying to spark a fire under his players’ you-know-whats, that attitude came to a head on May 28, 2016 — five years ago today.
It began the previous October, when, during the second game of the National League Division Series, a slide by the Dodgers’ Chase Utley broke the leg of shortstop Ruben Tejada. The Mets got the last laugh in the series, winning the decisive fifth game, and the anger caused by the play largely subsided for seven months.
For the first time since the NLDS, the Dodgers rolled into New York to kick off a three-game weekend series that should have been focused on the 1986 World Series 30th anniversary celebration that was to take place on Saturday. Instead, Mets fans needed to let Utley and his team know how they felt about them.
On Friday, Utley battled through the shower of boos to deliver yet another crushing blows to the Mets when he cleared the bases with two outs in the top of the ninth inning to tie the game against Jeurys Familia, who entered at the start of the frame with a four-run lead. Again, though, New York had the final say. Curtis Granderson tucked the second pitch of the bottom of the ninth just inside the right field foul pole to win it.
Since the mid-1980s — except for maybe the early 2000s fracases between Mike Piazza and Roger Clemens (and Shawn Estes?) — the Mets haven’t exactly been known as a team that seeks blood in getting revenge against their adversaries. But if there was ever a pitcher in that timeframe who would take it upon himself to let his team know he has its back, it was Noah Syndergaard. In particular, the young version of Thor who took the mound for the middle game on Saturday.
Tejada wasn’t even on the team then, having been released towards the end of spring training as he yielded the starting shortstop job to Asdrubal Cabrera. In fact, Tejada, one of the longest-tenured Mets at the time of his release, had been designated for assignment earlier that day after just 34 at-bats with the St. Louis Cardinals.
With Dwight Gooden visiting the FOX broadcast booth, Utley dug in for his second plate appearance of the evening in the third inning after striking out to lead off the game. Syndergaard’s first pitch, a 99 mph fastball, sailed behind Utley’s back and, without hesitation, call-up umpire Adam Hamari leaped out from behind home plate to eject the pitcher.
Ironically, Utley would get the last laugh this time, homering off Logan Verrett in his next at-bat and ripping a grand slam off Hansel Robles in the seventh inning. Yet, the lasting image from May 28, 2016 is not Syndergaard’s message nor the final nail in the coffin that was Utley’s years-long pummeling of the Mets.
On the night of June 12, 2018, while the Mickey Callaway-led Mets were in the process of dropping to 28-35 with an 8-2 loss against the Atlanta Braves, a never-before-seen video of the Syndergaard ejection that featured a mic’d-up Tom Hallion, the first base umpire that night, made the rounds on social media and the internet. As tempers flared, including that of Collins, Hallion’s microphone picked up the manager’s profanity-laced tirade.
Collins, like his general manager Sandy Alderson, had routinely displayed his experience with the media, developed over years in the game, in settings such as interviews and press conferences. Careful to release too much in terms of his thoughts on controversial topics, this was his official comment to the press when Utley’s two-game suspension for the Tejada slide was overturned in March of 2016:
“I guess the easiest way to put it is we have a new slide rule and there’s a reason why that rule’s been put in. One of the major reasons is because of what happened to Ruben. I wasn’t in the meeting. I wasn’t there for their decision, so we’ll go play baseball.”
The leaked video cast Collins in a much different light.
“You’ve got to give us a shot,” he screamed as Hallion’s tone similarly exploded in the heat of the moment. “Why don’t we get a shot, Tommy? I know it, but MLB did nothing to that guy. Nothing!”
The Mets certainly found very little sustained success with Collins in the dugout, though it’s debatable whether that was entirely due to factors within his control. Unequivocally, however, his passion and devotion to having his players’ backs time and again, earn my full respect. And I don’t think my ass is in the jackpot for saying that.
