New York Mets manager Terry Collins once benefited from the question, “Can he take us to the next level?” when he was hired for his first major league managerial job with the Houston Astros. The Astros of the early-1990s had undergone a full-blown rebuild that, while not on a level with that of the current Astros with a total expansion-level teardown, was still dedicated to young players like Craig Biggio, Jeff Bagwell, Ken Caminiti, Darryl Kile, Luis Gonzalez and others.
That manager, Art Howe, carved out a reputation with those Astros and later the Oakland Athletics and New York Mets as a manager who could oversee youngsters and develop them without concern that intimidation and fear could sabotage them. As they rose from 65-97 in 1991 to 85-77 in 1993, the Astros were looking for someone who could take those youngsters and point them in the direction of winning with discipline and intensity. For that, they chose Collins, a longtime minor league manager and then-bullpen coach for manager Jim Leyland and the Pittsburgh Pirates.
Collins led the Astros to a 66-49 record in the strike-shortened 1994 season, with the club one-half game out of first place when the season ended abruptly in early August. In 1995 and 1996, the Astros had two second-place finishes and Collins, undone by the players tiring of his in-your-face methods and red-faced tantrums, was fired. Larry Dierker came out of the broadcast booth and his gentle, player-centric style represented a drastic contrast from Collins, and the Astros made the playoffs in four of Dierker’s five seasons at the helm.
Would that have happened under Collins? Might he have toned it down a la NFL coach Tom Coughlin for the good of himself and his players? Could he have evolved once the players were no longer impressionable youngsters in need of tough-love guidance and self-policing veterans? It’s pure speculation either way. After his firing by the Astros, he resurfaced with the Anaheim Angels and was once again undone by his abrasive personality and penchant for flipping food tables and tirades.
It took a decade for Collins to get another chance as a manager and, with the Mets, he took the team to the 2015 World Series after overseeing another rebuild. Regardless of the unexpected success and rise to contention that came around a year earlier than it was actually expected, there are factions who are still advocating Collins’s dismissal. Their disappointment is in part due to the World Series loss and that Collins was rewarded with a two-year contract extension through 2017.
Hiring, retaining and dismissing a manager is often a random maneuver that must be placed into the proper context. There are managers who were simply along for the ride and didn’t have much of anything to do with the team winning one way or the other. Bob Brenly is a prime example. Ironically, Brenly was the replacement for Buck Showalter, who had worn out his welcome with the Arizona Diamondbacks similar to Collins with the Astros. Brenly functioned as the “different voice” that the Diamondbacks supposedly needed. In reality, they could have propped a crash-test dummy up in the corner of the Diamondbacks’ dugout and put a uniform on it, and that team, with its veteran players and top-tier starters Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling, would have won just as many games as it did with Brenly, including the 2001 World Series.
Could the same be said about the 2015 Mets? That they would have made it just as far with Manager X as they did with Collins? In certain circles, the job of manager has been diminished to such a point that there is still a hardcore belief in the sabermetric nonsense that a manager should implement ideas of the front office, follow orders and be an easily replaceable “middle manager,” whose contribution is nonexistent and is designed as such. Over and over, teams prove that a manager who can galvanize a club and not mess up a good thing is the bare minimum that a team needs. In the aforementioned example of the Astros under Howe, they needed someone who had the skills that Howe had. Maybe he wasn’t the ideal choice to take a team that was ready to win and bring it all the way through to a title, but he served a purpose.
(Photo by Joshua Sarner/Icon Sportswire)
The Mets would have had to answer that question and make a decision commensurate with what they were during their rebuild and what they are now if they hadn’t made such a quantum leap from a 79-win also-ran in 2014 to the World Series in 2015. Once they did that, there should have been no question about bringing Collins back. For the most part, there wasn’t. But in some quarters, there was.
A small faction is still advocating that the Mets hire Wally Backman as manager for reasons that have never been clearly elucidated. Is it because he was a member of the 1986 champs? Is it that he has the Billy Martin aura of someone who’ll push, push, push with aggressiveness and personality traits bordering on the maniacal? No one seems to know. It’s strange that this baseball “genius” by word-of-mouth alone has yet to even be offered a big league coaching position, let alone a chance to interview for one of the many managerial openings over the past several years. But some Mets fans still want him.
Since the same calls for Backman would be just as loud if the Mets won the World Series under Collins, had hired Joe Maddon, or resurrected Connie Mack from the dead, it’s best to ignore those who advocate for his hiring.
But what about the others?
The profound disappointment that the Mets gave Collins the contract extension is bizarre and random. They want a replacement, but don’t have a specific person in mind to be that replacement. If there is going to be a change, that change has to be for a legitimate reason. Some managers are dismissed because of off-field issues. Others because they were neither to be credited for the team’s success nor blamed for its failures. Still others because they were not the right person for the job in spite of the results.
But the Mets and Collins? If there was a viable reason for the Mets to bring in another manager – and if there was even someone better available – then it’s worth it to brave the inevitable backlash and let Collins go. The lame excuse of “choosing not to renew his contract” would be swallowed by some as a semantics-laden non-firing firing. Those who dislike Collins are generally the sabermetric crowd. These purported adherents are, in a way, worse than the Backman brigade because the analytics folks portray themselves as smarter, and adherents of objective analysis when they are pushing for a purely subjective and inhuman decision.
The idea that the Mets need a different manager to “take them to the next level” might have had some semblance of validity had they finished at 85-77 – better than the under-.500 club they’d been during Collins’s first four seasons as manager but not a significant jump – instead of 90-72 with a surprising division title and an even more surprising run to the World Series. But they did make that leap. If the Mets were to fire the manager after this season, the rational fans, media and especially the players would be enraged not because Collins has suddenly turned into an irreplaceable asset, but because it’s a brutal lack of appreciation for the work he did and a signal that no one will be rewarded and the amount of loyalty to longtime employees is zero.
There’s a line between being ruthless because it’s necessary for the overall good and being outright cruel. How can it be justified to keep Collins throughout the years of the club’s rebuild and lack of talent he had to work with, give him some talent and have him win a pennant, and then fire him? The game hasn’t passed him by, the players love him, he achieved far more than even the most positive viewer could have reasonably expected with a still-flawed team, and he came to within three wins of winning a championship.
Firing him would have done little more than revert the Mets to the haphazard and absurd organization that they were somewhat reasonably perceived as for the past five years. After a pennant and renewed positivity surrounding the organization, that’s the last thing they needed, even if there was someone better available.
And that’s another thing: there isn’t.
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