June 3, 2011, Mets game story and Terry Collins sidebar for Metro NYC Newspaper
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Simply, the Mets were at their nadir.
They have not had their ace all season as he recuperates from off-season shoulder surgery. Their presumptive three and four hitters are on the disabled list. Their normally silent owner has become loquacious regarding the team and its athletes. They had lost four of their last six and eight of 14 overall. Their manager, hired because he was the diametric opposite of his predecessor, erupted for the first time in his tenure as manager.
The team had become a PR punching bag. And the only response is to punch back.
So, naturally, they found themselves down a touchdown after three innings. Game over, series over, season, for all intents and purposes, over, right? Wrong.
“You need to do this to show that you can do it,” Terry Collins said after the Mets’ 9-8 come from behind victory over the Pirates at Citi Field Thursday afternoon. The Mets (26-30) and Pirates (26-29) split the four game series. The Mets were outscored 25-20 in the four games.
Jason Isringhausen threw a scoreless eighth to earn his first win as a Met since June 8, 1999. Despite allowing two hits and a run, Francisco Rodriguez earned his 16th save. Jose Veras surrendered two runs, four walks and a hit in two-thirds of an inning to fall to 1-2.
Pittsburgh led 7-0 after three innings because Mike Pelfrey was awful. The Pirates had introduced the right-hander to every nook and cranny Citi Field has to offer over five innings. Pelfrey finished having yielded seven earned runs on 10 hits.
“Chalk it up to being one of those days,” Pelfrey said. “Obviously I didn’t pitch the way I wanted to.”
Added Collins: “Balls that are usually down were thigh-high.”
Carlos Beltran began the comeback by blasting a two-out, two run homer off the first deck in left in the bottom of the third. He led off the sixth with a double and scored the first of four Met runs in the inning on Ruben Tejada two-out, two RBI single. Nick Evans (on a Daniel Murphy single) and Ruben Tejada (on a passed ball) also scored in the sixth and tied the game.
“We finally got a big swing,” Collins said of Beltran’s homer. Beltran finished 2-for-4 with four RBI and two runs scored. The three-run homer allowed the right fielder to supplant Cleon Jones for seventh place on the team’s all-time RBI list. “God, that got us right back in the game. All of a sudden they felt they were in it.”
Collins' primary theme to his team Wednesday night was to play the game in the right way. With the game tied 7-7 in the eighth, the Mets successfully played fundamental baseball while the Pirates proved once again why they have been a mess since 1993. Veras balked Willie Harris (who pinch ran for Ronny Paulino, who led off the inning with a single) to second and the Mets utility man moved to third on a wild pitch. Following a Josh Thole walk, Harris scored on a Ruben Tejada sac fly. Veras walked Daniel Murphy and Jose Reyes back-to-back to load the bases. After Justin Turner fouled out, Carlos Beltran drew a bases loaded walk that gave the Mets what turned out to be the game-winning run.
“I told Carlos afterwards, ‘I’ve seen you have some good at-bats but I thought that was as good an at-bat…’,” Collins said. “He didn’t try to do too much. He was going to take a single. He didn’t look like he was trying to hit the ball out of the ballpark. He was trying to put it in play. He had a good day for us.”
Collins' rant rallies lineup
A little more than 12 hours after his first public outburst as manager of the New York Mets, Terry Collins was not backing off his stance.
“I care how this team plays. I care about how this team prepares. So I said what I wanted to say; obviously I think we have to get better at what we do,” Collins said in his Thursday morning media briefing before the Mets’ 9-8 series finale win over the Pirates.
A red-faced Collins had stormed into the Citi Field interview room a few minutes after the Mets 9-3 loss Wednesday night and proceeded to explode at his team’s play. He expressed similar sentiments when he met with his team immediately following the loss.
“I’m running out of ideas, here. Do we play hard? Absolutely. That’s not the issue. The issue is not effort. It’s about execution. Make no mistake about it, I truly believe in the players we have. I don’t care where they started out the season. I don’t care. This is a team thing,” Collins seethed.
“I sit up every night thinking what I can do to put us over the top. I don’t have the answers. I’m searching. I’m wringing the rag dry of coming in here and looking at you guys and having you look at me like I’m a stinking fool,” he continued before offering a threat.
“I’ll take all the sucking blame anyone wants to hand out. That seventh and eighth inning was my players that I put out there. So maybe there’s where I have to make some adjustments and by God, they’ll be made. I don’t know if it comes with finding different players, but they’ll be made. Something’s going to be changed.”
The Mets have lost eight of 15 and had blown late inning leads in four of their last six games. Not incidentally, the Mets lost those four games. So, the manager was asked if he suspected a sense of resignation from his team.
“That’s what I sense once in a while. When you’re around this team so much and I spend so much time trying to be in the clubhouse, be visible, be around them, and when you go to the mound and are in the dugout, you feel that sense,” Collins said Thursday morning. “When they tied the game up, you walk out to the mound to take a pitcher out and you’re looking at the faces around you, and you can see the ‘oh God, here we go,’ and that’s what we’re trying to stop. That’s the second meeting we’ve had to try and stop that.
“You sense it and try to stop it as soon as you can. They have to get through it. You can’t feel sorry for yourself because nobody else is. You (have) to resign yourself to the fact that you’re going to have to get two more (runs). The games we’ve had success in, you look up and the (opposition) will get one and we’ll go back and get another one. Right now, we’re just not adding on.”
http://www.metro.us/newyork/sports/article/879001--mets-rally-for-record-comeback-over-pirates--page0
posted by Denis P. Gorman at 11:03 AM
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