With another Mets blowout loss and another Nationals win over the Yankees, the Mets officially fell out of first place in the NL East for the first time since April 14. Despite that, manager Terry Collins insisted that no one in the clubhouse is panicking right now.
“We’re not even out of May”, said Collins. “There’s another 10 game winning streak that’s in there. There’s going to be another 5 game losing streak that’s in there. We’ve got to play the Nationals 12 times, 13 times — whatever we’ve got them left.” (Adam Rubin, ESPN)
“There’s a lot — a lot — of baseball left. there’s no sense of urgency here. We have things that we have to continue to try to do. We have to continue to try to watch the workload of some guys. We need to continue to try to get healthy. But there’s no panic here, believe me. Not in the clubhouse. Not anyplace else”.
Ever since the Mets started out with an 11 game winning streak to start with a record of 13-3, they’ve gone 10-15 since while squandering an eight game lead over the now first place Washington Nationals.
Added Collins: “A lot of people want to talk about the Nationals. Did they panic when they were 1-7? No. And we’re not going to panic either.”
The main issue with the Mets continues to be their offense. They’ve scored three runs or less in 16 of their last 22 games. They’ve also been shut out four times this season including Wednesday’s 9-0 loss.
“We’re not hitting the ball hard,” said Collins. “We’re not even barreling up some balls. I don’t know what the reason is. Other teams don’t have a problem hitting suckers out of this ballpark. We’ve just got to continue to walk that fine line of making sure we get something good to hit, we’ve got to put a hit on the barrel … We’ve got to quit worrying about hitting the ball out of the ballpark and worry about hitting some line drives.”
Despite back to back blowout losses to the Cardinals, Collins insist that the Mets will have no team meeting. He doesn’t want too many because he fears the players might start tuning them out.
It’s good to see the Mets staying calm despite facing some adversity. But they need to get their offense going and fast or we may be witnessing some real panic in the future, especially if we continue to see games like we saw the last two days.
