Well, hey there! I know you were worried. Yes, I took the Mets loss in the World Series kind of hard. You get so close to the whole thing and then it comes down to a few bad plays that if they are made, maybe I’ve been on a happy bender for the last month. But we all know that didn’t happen. Though I wasn’t sitting around the house all depressed watching Mets Classics, eating Haagen Dazs, and every few minutes bawling, “Aw Murph!”
There was some business to attend to. First came the finishing touches on One-Year Dynasty: Inside the Rise and Fall of the 1986 Mets, Baseball’s Impossible One-and-Done Champions, which originally had numerous opinions stated and interviews done about how the Mets would never match ’86 and could not win with current ownership. So that needed some massaging, but not as much as if the Mets had won the whole thing. I was ready to do the work. I really was, but… “Aw, Murph!” And I know if I’d made the throw Duda made when I was in Little League, I would have spent part of every offseason day throwing the ball against the garage door until I made the perfect throw. Every time. But where are we? Oh, that’s right, plugs!
We will have some report card grades, along with the Mets Gift of the Year, Favorite Nonplaying Met, Met’s Mets Log, and other features you have come to cherish (or scroll past when they are plugged on Facebook and Twitter). Just give me some time and space to get all this done.
Since I went so long between posts I have some bonus text for you. The book I wrote in 2008 that spurred the launching of this site, 100 Things Mets Should Know and Do Before They Die, will see its third edition in March of 2016. (new edition available for pre-order or old or previous edition because Santa’ll tell you those pre-orders do not always stuff stockings to the level he likes.
Here is a piece I wrote for the new edition of 100 Things that kept me from writing on this site. I have been rather critical of Terry Collins on this site—but he is getting his due in the latest version of 100 Things. You’ll have to pick up a copy to find out where T.C. ranks among the other four pennant winning Mets managers, plus Casey Stengel, the only Mets manager older than Teflon Terry is less than a decade from surpassing as oldest Mets manager in history. But I will say with all sincerity, 2015 was a superb job, Terry. You came awfully close to The Only Thing This Mets Fan Wants to See and Experience Before I Die. And for that we thank you.
Terry Collins
Frankly, if someone had told me in July of 2015 that I would have to clear room in this latest book update for a Terry Collins entry, I would have told the person that they were crazy. Who’s crazy now?
Terry Collins became the fifth Mets manager in history to win a National League pennant. The Mets, who had the most anemic offense in the National League when July began, became overnight thumpers following the arrival of Yoenis Cespedes, the headliner among several key acquisitions by Sandy Alderson around the July 31 trading deadline. Collins, who at 66 was baseball’s oldest manager in 2015, could have remained old school and followed the path that resulted in brief tenures with the Astros and Angels in the 1990s. But he embraced new methods.
One such development was “The Matrix,” not a confusing Keanu Reeves movie but a system created by the Mets front office profiling how hitters did against comparable pitchers. It paid dividends once the Mets roster acquired enough legitimate hitters to give Collins real lineup options. Those combinations differed almost nightly through the last two months of the year, but the results were consistent: 37-17 from the day the Mets made the Cespedes deal to the weekend they clinched the NL East.
It was an odd year in many ways. The Mets, who hadn’t been no-hit in 22 years, were no-hit twice in one season for the first time. No Met had ever homered three times in a game at home—it happened twice (Kirk Nieuwenhuis and Lucas Duda). Queens native Steven Matz drove in a major league record (for a pitcher) four runs in his major league debut and got the win. And Collins, who in June 2015 surpassed Mets managing legend Gil Hodges for third all-time in team victories, won a career high 90 games. He joined Hodges and Yogi Berra, along with the two men ahead of him—Davey Johnson and Bobby Valentine—as Mets managers to win a National League pennant.
Collins never reached the majors as a player, but the Michigan native landed in New York after managing in Japan and guiding China’s inaugural World Baseball Classic team in 2009. He served as Mets minor league field coordinator in 2010 and, after Alderson replaced Omar Minaya as GM, became the 20th manager in Mets history.
Collins was a seen as a company man who would take the long view in rebuilding, but what had felt as endless as a Department of Transportation highway project was suddenly complete. To his credit, Collins still gave answers that made reporters chuckle and the internet buzz, even as some grandstand managers scratched their heads. Should he have taken out Matt Harvey earlier in Game 5 of the World Series? It seems so in retrospect, but he had successfully rolled the dice in Game 5 of the Division Series, bringing in rookie phenom Noah Syndergaard for his first major league relief appearance in a one-run game. Collins looked brilliant when Syndergaard was perfect and the Mets won the deciding game at Dodger Stadium. Collins’s club then took on the Cubs and everyone’s favorite managing genius, Joe Maddon, winning four straight after going 0-7 against Chicago in 2015, B.C.—Before Cespedes.
Maybe the clock struck midnight on Cinderella in the World Series—two losses to Kansas City did come after midnight in extra innings. But if there was a fairy godmother/father for the 2015 Mets, it was Terry Collins. For a team that Sports Illustrated picked to finish fourth in its division, with a manager that many pundits thought would be among the first fired in ’15, Collins was the only NL manager still in a dugout when October was pulled off the calendar.
—From third edition of 100 Things Mets Fans Should Know and Do Before They Die (2016)