Roundtable: What are Terry Collins’ strengths as a manager?

Early Thursday morning the Mets were involved in another extra innings game. Carlos Torres was cruising and had thrown only 17 pitches in two innings but Terry Collins removed him so he could get Pedro Feliciano on the mound. The Dodgers had two lefties due up in the inning but in the middle was Yasiel Puig. Feliciano got the first lefty but Puig reached second base on a great hustle play. The second lefty delivered the game-winning hit.

MetsBlog delivers an instant reaction after each game under the heading, “The Least You Should Know.” There were five things listed about the game and not one was: “Haste to get lefty reliever in the game leads to loss.” That’s not to pick on MetsBlog – it’s doubtful that any of the leading outlets would identify that as the issue. But a tactical decision by Collins blew up on him – again.

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But I’m tired of spitting into the wind. So, to educate myself, I turned to my friends in the blogosphere and asked them the following question:

Terry Collins is praised for his ability to get his players to play hard for him. What do you think his other strengths as a manager are?

These people all do great work and their names are hyperlinked to their blogs so please go ahead and click on them to check out their real stuff.

Greg Prince – Has more wins than Sparky Anderson

I can’t remember a single instance of “one Met said,” where Terry is concerned. Nobody bitches him out anonymously. He must be a helluva communicator to leave no traces of publicly expressed resentment.

Chris Walendin – Runs circles around Gene Mauch

Can… can I pass? Oh boy. Critiquing the manager’s job performance is an area of fanhood I typically do my best to avoid. In part, that’s because I don’t find it to be very interesting (analyzing the job, not the job itself, which I find fascinating). But my main reason is that the discussion always seems to dissolve into a toxic cocktail of presumptions, selective memory, and personal bias. If the team is a losing team, the manager is often viewed as bad at this and that. If the team is a winning team, the manager is often viewed as good at this and that. My guess is that if you sat down to watch another beleaguered, sub-.500 team’s game with a group of their fans, you’d hear just as much griping about their manager’s “stupid decisions”, too.

I’ve had no real expectations for this team since Collins took over, and he’s managed to meet my lack of expectations. So I guess my take on Collins is that he’s done a decent job all-around, given what he’s had to work with. If I’m watching a particular game, sure I’ll bemoan that he’s batting Justin Turner second, or that he’s using Scott Rice too much, or that he’s pinch hitting for Matt Harvey, or that he’s not pinch hitting for Matt Harvey and instead having him bunt, but the truth is, I’m working with a very small fraction of the relevant information. And on top of that, when things don’t work, I get to say, “See?!?!?” when in reality, who knows if I was right. I dunno, the team’s playing hard and there’s been no drama in the clubhouse spilling into the tabloids (ever since the departure of a certain performance enhanced egomaniac, anyway). To me, that kinda dwarfs the rest of his perceived failures and accomplishments.

Howard Megdal – Plans to be in Cooperstown when Gil Hodges gets inducted

He also seems comfortable wearing the Mr. Met hat.

Paul Festa – Manages pitchers better than Bobby Cox

Terry Collins is a teacher first and foremost. He views his players as students, and he’s the instructor. He knows when to be tough on his players and when to back off. For example, it took guts to tell his young pitcher, Zack Wheeler, that he has to pick up his teammates after an inning that contained a nightmare of fielding miscues. It’s a controversial thing to say, and it’s a hard lesson to learn, but it carries with it a message of accountability – Learn how to handle and overcome adversity, even if it’s not your fault.

He’s not afraid to make adjustments to his lineup based on performance or matchups. His platoons have yielded success – Kirk Nieuwenhuis and Juan Lagares competed for the CF job in a platoon, and Lagares showed enough ability to win the job outright. Ike Davis and Josh Satin have thrived in their first base platoon. Keeping Ike away from lefties has been big part of his recent success. Giving Anthony Recker more playing time mid-season gave John Buck a little more energy. After falling to a season-low .205 batting average on July 5th, Buck has hit .267 since. He’s hit only one home run in that time, but has driven in 18 runs.

Collins works well in a “Moneyball” style of organization. He’s a good soldier who makes on-field decisions cooperatively with the front office. This is typical of how organizations like the Oakland A’s and Boston Red Sox work with their managers – they are extensions of the baseball operations office. And that’s clearly how Sandy Alderson likes to run the Mets.

Finally, he handles the media well. He doesn’t always put a positive spin on bad situations the way someone like Willie Randolph had a tendency to do. Sure, there have been missteps (like when he and the front office have had different injury reports, the remarks he made that were perceived as derogatory toward the fans), but for the most part, what you see is what you get with Collins.

John Coppinger – His hunches always work out better than Don Zimmer’s

I’ve long maintained that in today’s game, getting your team behind you and to play hard might be as important if not more important than being a great tactician. He’s merely okay in that regard. He’s had his moments where he’s outmanaged the other guy badly, and there have been moments where he was severely outmanaged, like the one where he took out his pitcher before Justin Upton was announced as a pinch hitter, allowing the Braves more options. He does have this strange knack for coming out smelling like a rose even when his maneuvers shouldn’t have worked. That’s gotta be a strength, right?

Oh, he does have one more strength: He’s great at finding at-bats for red-headed second basemen.

Jon Springer – Knows Wes Westrum’s number without having to look it up

It doesn’t say much by itself but Terry is easily the best manager this team has employed since Bobby Valentine, and I think for the most part he has succeeded at doing the job he was brought here to do, which was 1) preach the gospel of the “right way to play the game,” 2) keep the players and fans reasonably motivated, and 3) prepare all of us to take the next step amid the challenges of rebuilding a distressed franchise with minimal resources over a period of three years. With the exception of the discouraging second half last year, I think he’s accomplished all that pretty convincingly.

Although I have some issues with his X’s and O’s, especially when it comes to the bullpen, I rarely feel as though he’s at a disadvantage to the other team’s manager on any given night, which is a subtle but vital quality after years of never feeling that way under Randolph and Manuel. He’s also handled the media and team crises (Valdespin, Davis) pretty well and certainly gotten a lot out of this 2013 team considering how rotten the offense is most nights. I’ve thought all along he’d be moving on after this year, so there’s one thing he can still accomplish that none of his predecessors managed to do: Have a happy ending.

*****

Thanks to Greg, Chris, Howard, Paul, John and Jon for participating