Richard Herr - So Whaddya Think? - 11

TC

“So whaddya think?”

“Whaddya mean? What do I think?”

“Whaddya think about Terry Collins as a manager?”

“I got mixed feelings about him. There are good things, there are bad.”

“What things?”

“Let me take the good first. Before last season, both Colon and Cespedes turned down more money to come back to the Mets.”

“Yeah.”

“They came here because it was a fun club to be with. I credit Collins for that. He’s got a good clubhouse. I also have to give credit to David and some of the other veteran guys. But think of where we’d be without Cespedes coming back last year, which led to his being around for the next four years. That’s big.”

“You got any other good things.”

“He gets along with the players.”

“Didn’t we just say that?”

“Not exactly. His last two managerial jobs, he fought with the players. Now he gets along with them. That means one very important thing: he can change. You can’t say that about a lot of managers.”

“True. Anything else?”

“It’s something else related to other things I just said. He works for Sandy.”

“That’s a bad thing?”

“It is. You know Sandy’s giving him a lot more marching orders than most GMs give their managers.”

“So?”

“So this guy who has a history of being outspoken, even downright argumentative, is now being a company man and doing what the front office tells him to.”

“That’s good?”

“It shows he adapts.”

“Doesn’t that prove a little frustrating for him?”

“I have a feeling that, after he has a session with Sandy he doesn’t particularly enjoy, he goes home, goes out into his back yard, and yells at the oak tree to vent his frustrations.”

“You think so?”

“Personally, I have always found oak trees to be very patient listeners.”

“You got any more good things about Terry?”

“Not much more.”

“So you have your list of complaints about him?”

“As do most fans. The first thing is the guys he likes and the guys he dislikes.”

“Who are you thinking about?”

“Most of the veterans. He likes them. He’s come out and said he likes somebody who’s got something on the back of their baseball card.”

“That’s not bad.”

“It is if those good things back there happened a long time ago. When you come to bat, they don’t send you to first base just on the basis of what you did twelve years ago. You gotta face the pitcher on that day. And you gotta swing the bat, the back of your baseball card can’t do that for you.”

“But it’s a good thing if you use someone who’s tried and true.”

“There’s only one thing wrong with that: someone’s gotta be tried before they become true. He’s got to get off the back of the baseball card thing and give the rookies more of a chance. He’s also gotta rest those backs of the baseball cards periodically during the very long 162-game season.”

“What else?”

“The guys that he likes for no good reason. I think the Met front office may have secretly given money to Eric Campbell to get him to go to Japan. The way Terry kept using him and his Mendoza batting average was not to be believed.”

“He shoulda been using the guys he didn’t like instead?”

“That’s right. But he doesn’t trust them. Like Wilmer Flores. He wouldn’t use him and wouldn’t use him, until he was finally browbeaten into sending him out there. And usually he’d hit, that is until there was one day he got an ofer. Then Terryd sit him for a week.”

“He don’t seem to like Wilmer?”

“Not from what I see. He also didn’t like Angel Pagan, so we wound up trading that guy for two pieces of cheese.”

“They were major league ballplayers.”

“Cheese woulda been better.”

“Any other raps on Terry?”

“The big one: the bullpen. He overuses some guys till their arms fall off, and the guys he doesn’t trust sit around collecting cobwebs. That is, up until the time they come in and do a good job. Then he uses them for far too many pitches until their previously unused arms begin to fall off.”

“True.”

“Here’s something that’s interesting. Terry’s a disciple of Joe Madden, and Madden overused his relievers in the World Series. Aroldis Chapman couldn’t get out of Chicago fast enough. Terry’s also like that, and he’s gotta get away from that philosophy or all the good relievers aren’t going to want to come to the Mets.”

 “Can anything be done about that?”

“There’s hope because, here’s where I get back to one of my first points, Terry knows how to change. Maybe he can listen to some one he trusts to get him to moderate his opinions. I thought that when the Mets replaced the bench coach they might find someone to help Terry with this.”

“Do you think Terry will actually change?”

“All I can do is hope. Like I keep sitting here hoping you might jump up, wave to Percy, and order us another round.”

Whenever Richard Herr isn’t solving all the Mets’ problems, he spends his time writing humorous science fiction novels.

You can see his books at https://www.amazon.com/Richard-Herr/e/B00J5XBKX4.