Mattingly and Collins deserve Manager of the Year consideration

It's obvious that Kirk Gibson is going to win the National League manager of the year. Nobody, and I mean NOBODY was picking the Diamondbacks to win the NL West this year, let alone take an 8 1/2 game lead in early September.

So Gibson will add a Manager of the Year trophy next to his MVP (which will no doubt be the subject of another blog post.)

But take a look at what Don Mattingly and Terry Collins have done. Both are playing for big budgeted fiascos. The Dodgers have had as ugly a season as I can remember with all of the behind the scenes nonsense. The McCourt divorce. The handling of the Brian Stowe beating. The MLB take over. The Bankruptcy. The money being taken out of the team for personal reasons. The fans staying away in droves.

There was every reason in the world for the Dodgers to pack up and not show up. And for a while that is exactly what they were doing.

The Mets were also a mess. I thought they were a 90 loss team waiting to happen. The post Madoff Amazin' Mess was a mismatch of broken down veterans, expensive players who wanted out, young players who weren't ready and a parade of players on the disabled list.

And playing in the same Divison as the Phillies and Braves meant the season was irrelevant in April. And come trading deadline, they were sellers.

90 losses may have been a generous prediction.

Yet here we are on September 10th. The Dodgers are just 1 game under .500.
The Mets are 2 games under .500.

It would not take a Herculean effort for both teams to finish with a winning record.

The Dodgers are aided by the fact that Clayton Kershaw should win the NL Cy Young and there is a case for Matt Kemp to win the MVP.

The Mets don't have that star power, but they are finding unlikely heroes and staying focused in a way that I didn't think they had in them.

So give Don Mattingly and Terry Collins a lot of credit.
Both the Dodgers and Mets are ugly places off of the field and if the on field product reflected that, nobody would have blinked.

But if they could weather the storm of the craziness of 2011 and say "Hey! At least we put a winning product on the field" then THAT is worthy of Manager of the Year consideration.

Color me impressed, Dodger and Met fans.

I've got to give the Mets credit...

I've been brutal on the Mets both on my blog and the podcast.

I wondered how a team in New York could be losing money, putting a non contender on the field and be an absolute mess.

And I predicted that they will have a firesale and lose 90 games.

Now I stand by most of those statements.
But I have to give Terry Collins some credit.
He has been handed a crappy hand (and the aftermath of the Omar Minaya years) and has the team over .500.

He doesn't have David Wright nor Johan Santana at his disposal. And the line up and bullpen has been patch work.

Just last night the Mets had Willie Harris at DH, Lucas Duda at first base, Justin Turner at second base and Josh Thole at catcher. That's a lineup you'd expect at a split squad spring training game.

And they throttled Detroit to the tune of 14 runs. And that's not a chump team. That's a first place team they blew out of the water on the road.

I don't know how much longer this will last. I still think Reyes and Beltran and Rodriguez are going to be dealt in a month (and why not? They could get three valuable and cheap building blocks for them.)

And it is unlikely that they will leapfrog five teams for a playoff spot.
But if they split the next few games, they will be at the official half way spot with a winning record... and that's more than I was expecting.

And if I can give the Pirates, Nationals, Diamondbacks, Indians and Mariners all credit for exceeding expectations, then I suppose I should for the Mets as well.

Things could be worse for the Mets. They could be the Dodgers.

Take a good look at CitiField, honey...

For this will be the site of my career defining fiasco. You thought Houston and Anaheim were bad? This is New York! They REMEMBER the disasters here!

(Seriously... it should be even money Terry Collins doesn't finish the season.)

Mets search to REPLACE Terry Collins starts tomorrow

So the Mets are going to do it.
They are going to hand the keys to one of the most expensive rosters in baseball and what SHOULD be one of the marquee franchises in the game to a guy who couldn't handle the baseball pressure cookers that are Houston and Anaheim.

Now you are going to put him in the New York media market who want to run managers out of town on a rail AFTER they win a World Series?

The Mets are giving a hot head manager with a 24/7 sports media hovering over Queens waiting for him to say something stupid?

This is a catastrophe waiting to happen.

If I am Bob Melvin, Wally Backman or even Bobby Valentine for that matter... I'd have my resumes ready. There might be an opening in APRIL!

By the way, I am saying this is a bad move NOW and I said it was a bad move 15 days ago when I couldn't believe he was in the running.

No second guess here.

So Terry Collins, who had basically a players revolt on his hands in Anaheim, gets a third chance.

Chris Chambliss? He can't get a first chance.

Go figure.

TERRY COLLINS?

Are the Mets REALLY considering Terry Collins as a managerial candidate?
Evidently they are!

A guy who flamed out in Houston... a guy who had the players revolt against him in Anaheim... not exactly the two biggest baseball media pressure cookers in the land... is being considered to manage in New York City?

And be asked to take over a team that has a combination of veterans and young players... a team that has no identity but tons of expectations... and you could hand the keys over to a notorious hot head with no patience?

If they hire Terry Collins, they should also hire his replacement as well and introduce him in the press conference as "the man who will replace Collins when he melts down and tries to stab a WFAN host in the neck with a pen."

Why not just make the marketing slogan for the year be "Mets baseball... There Will Be Blood!"