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When Bob Klapisch says so, it's official! Terry Collins is on the hot seat. Klapisch: Mets' Terry Collins losing grip on manager's job Tuesday, April 30, 2013 Last updated: Wednesday May 1, 2013, 12:30 AM By BOB KLAPISCH RECORD COLUMNIST The countdown on Terry Collins began on the first day of pitchers and catchers and nothing so far has made it any easier to believe he�ll be back with the Mets in 2014. Of course, Collins has handled his lame-duck status with grace and maturity � he�s an honest guy, good with people � but that hasn�t stopped Sandy Alderson from letting his manager continue to drift away from the mother ship. Collins, no dummy, knows he would�ve already received a vote of confidence, even in private, if Alderson and Jeff Wilpon were entirely sold on his body of work. Both men know what job security � or its absence � does to a manager�s standing in the clubhouse. Without a commitment from ownership, Collins looks like a short-timer on a bad team, a latter-day George Bamberger. The current six-game losing streak, including embarrassing back-to-back losses to the Marlins, doesn�t help his cause, either. So what�ll it take for Collins to avoid being fired, even before the end of the season? A more robust roster would help, obviously. In the meantime, he has to prove to the front office that the Mets are listening to him, and that he�s relevant enough to relate to the next wave of stars � particularly Matt Harvey, Zack Wheeler and Travis D�Arnaud. Collins� relationship with David Wright is solid, as it should be. But just as Davey Johnson had built-in ties with Dwight Gooden and Darryl Strawberry and Ron Darling, among others, in 1984, it�s Wally Backman, not Collins, who has a head start with the 20-somethings who�ll be at Citi for the rest of the decade. The best-case scenario for Collins is to keep the Mets around .500 and then finish out September with a modest surge. The over-under on that algorithm is 82 wins, which might be enough for Collins to get rehired. It�s highly improbable, especially as it already feels like the season is slipping away. But, with five months still remaining, nothing is impossible. Not yet. Part Two of Collins� must-do list is even more critical. He has to become a master tactician, in the same conversation with, say, Buck Showalter, able to get the most out of a below-average club. Collins had a particularly bad series against the Phillies over the weekend, especially in his choices with the bullpen. On Saturday, the Mets were trailing the Phillies by only a run in the fifth inning, yet Collins summoned Robert Carson, the last pitcher on his staff. The results were disastrous, as Carson instantly surrendered five runs. Collins inexplicably used a mop-up man in a close game and paid dearly. The following day, Collins flubbed a more complex set of choices, allowing Ryan Howard to beat the Mets with a pinch-hit, two-run double in the seventh. With Kevin Frandsen at the plate in a tie game and runners on first and second, Collins decided Jonathon Niese had reached his limit after his 117th pitch. Collins wanted Scott Atchison, a righty, to face Frandsen, also a righty. But why? Surely, Collins must�ve known that Atchison�s appearance would prompt Charlie Manuel to use Howard off the bench. Didn�t Collins know Howard was a career .421 pinch hitter and was the last guy the Mets wanted to see? But that�s exactly how it played out, because Collins didn�t want to bring a lefty like Scott Rice to face Frandsen. Instead, he gambled on Atchison versus Howard, and promptly got smoked. The Mets were swept and haven�t won a game since. These are the ways Collins is being judged from now on. Call it unfair, and you�d be right, because there are so few assets for Collins to draw upon, especially in the bullpen. But like it or not, this is an audition and Collins is already struggling. http://www.northjersey.com/columnists/Klapisch_Mets_Terry_Collins_losing_grip_on_managers_job.html?page=all Terry Collins is officially on the hot seat Craig Calcaterra May 1, 2013, 10:00 AM EDT Terry Collins is not under contract for 2014. That alone makes his job security a tenuous proposition at best. But Bob Klapisch notes that he�s on even shakier ground than that: "Without a commitment from ownership, Collins looks like a short-timer on a bad team, a latter-day George Bamberger. The current six-game losing streak, including embarrassing back-to-back losses to the Marlins, doesn�t help his cause, either. So what�ll it take for Collins to avoid being fired, even before the end of the season? A more robust roster would help, obviously. In the meantime, he has to prove to the front office that the Mets are listening to him, and that he�s relevant enough to relate to the next wave of stars � particularly Matt Harvey, Zack Wheeler and Travis D�Arnaud." Considering Wheeler isn�t on the Mets and D�Arnaud is on the DL for a long time, well, good luck Terry. You sorta have to figure that Collins is bright enough to know that he was hired to be a caretaker manager. It�s a respectable gig. In light of that I find worrying about his job to be way less interesting than wondering who might replace him. I figure that the Wally Backman truthers will come out strong again soon. And I figure it�s silly to think that Backman won�t get a chance to manage the Mets at some point. I just wonder whether he�s the next guy or the next-next guy. http://hardballtalk.nbcsports.com/2013/05/01/terry-collins-is-officially-on-the-hot-seat/

Off-day Harvey: Harvelous picks up a tenth of a bbRef WAR point on an off day, and now leads all major leaguers in the category, even Clay Bucholz. http://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/MLB/2013-batting-leaders.shtml

Edgy MD wrote: Anybody want to talk about the game? Yeah. Is Harvey gonna pitch in this game or what?

15" x 36" illustration; no text on actual print

Zvon wrote: batmagadanleadoff wrote: Is Harvey pitching tonight? http://www.hark.com/reservoir-dogs/har-de-fucking-har Manchurian Harvey

Is Harvey pitching tonight?

Edgy MD wrote: Ceetar wrote: Because most of the time you _don't_ use those guys. Why carry the 25th man that's only pitching in blowouts or if the game happens to go 15? If he's good enough to use regularly, you're going to find him innings to pitch regularly, and if he's just eating space to save waste innings.. Terry Leach appeared in 52 games in 1988. Darren Oliver in 45 games in 2006. Pat Mahomes appeared in 92 games between 1999 and 2000. These appearances covered a large amount of innings, which served the team. The were not "eating space to save waste innings" (not sure what that means but still), but rather held a little bit more in reserve than other pitchers to be used when a long outing or emergency start might crop up, sparing perhaps several pitchers who maybe are more effective but trained for shorter appearances, and are used with less reserve. There was a pretty demonstrable benefit. There's some truth to what cee sez. Starting pitchers pitch less innings these days. So relievers, it follows, pitch more frequently. And so the trend is to stock the rosters with shorter relievers who can pitch on more days, if not more innings. Hence, the lack of longer relievers, at least relative to the way things used to be 15 or 20 years ago and before that.

Continuing the unintended trend of this thread, where we (sorta) shit on all things Mets through the prism of Matt Harvey: Why Matt Harvey Is Not Dwight Gooden By TIM MARCHMAN There are times when it seems like Matt Harvey would be even better than he is if he were less of a pitcher and more of a thrower. The man can reel off 98 mile-per-hour fastballs at the letters at will when he's in a tight spot, and so watching him nick corners and change speeds is like watching Carmelo Anthony pass and set picks: not what you're paying for and totally beside the point. Harvey is a strikeout artist, already one of the best ever when going by the raw numbers. Among all starting pitchers who have pitched at least as many innings as he has, only three have bettered his 10.4 strikeouts per nine innings, and just four did so through age 24. Since K-rate is usually considered the single best predictor of how well a pitcher will age, from this angle the inevitable comparisons to past Mets greats like Dwight Gooden, Nolan Ryan and Tom Seaver make sense. What this ignores, though, is that Harvey is pitching at a time when strikeouts mean less than they ever have. He is obviously brilliant, but the expectations may already be unfair. Over the last two years, strikeouts are at a historic high, reaching 7.7 this year, a rather abrupt rise of 10% above what they were in 2009. There are a lot of explanations for why this has happened�sabermetric theory negating the stigma of the strikeout, new batting philosophies that prize sitting on a given pitch, the increased use of short relievers�but the result is that whiffs have doubled since the heyday of Stan Musial and Jackie Robinson. The increase isn't unprecedented�the major league K-rate rose by around 33% between 1951 and 1960�but it is disorienting. For most of the time I've been watching baseball, a strikeout rate of 6.9 would have indicated a reasonably hard-throwing starter. Over the last two years it's the mark hit by Paul Maholm, a classic junkballer. What this means is that Harvey's historic strikeout numbers are, in all, a bit less historic than they seem. His K-rate of 10.0 per game is, on its own, the sixth-best such mark by a 24-year-old in major-league history. If you divide individual rate by league rate, though, it comes out that he's striking out a third more hitters than average�impressive, but no better than what Brett Myers did with the Philadelphia Phillies in 2005, and nothing close to what Gooden did at 19, when his K-rate was more than twice as high as the league's. This is no kind of bad thing. Along with Myers, Harvey's strikeout rate at his age puts him in the company of Steve Carlton, Roger Clemens and Pedro Martinez, who all went on to have pretty good careers. But in context, he isn't quite the peerless machine he may seem. The paradox is that this may mean he has room to grow. Much of Harvey's success so far has been driven by an absurd and unsustainably low batting average on balls in play of .230. It's just in the nature of things that this is going to rise and consequently lead to speculation about whether the league is figuring him out and so on. His strikeout rate, though, could also rise. Leaving aside what he's done statistically, he's a classic power pitcher, with that high, riding fastball and a set of breaking pitches that dive down and in just under the hands. There's no obvious reason why Harvey, with a little more experience, shouldn't strike out as many batters relative to the league as Tim Lincecum did in 2008 or Mark Prior did in 2005. Some of what he loses as hitters do better when they make contact, then, could be offset by him simply allowing even fewer of them to do so. This would leave him an even more effective pitcher than he already is�not necessarily the peer of a young Gooden or Seaver, but quite comparable to David Cone, the last pitcher who made this kind of impact on his first run as a Mets starter, and one whose development in his mid-20s tracked this exact pattern. Cone isn't necessarily the first name that comes to mind when dreaming on a young pitcher, but he was a Cy Young Award winner and five-time All-Star who at various times led the league in wins, strikeouts and innings, played for five World Series champions and had a better claim to being a Hall of Famer than he ever got credit for. He was a thrower who became the pitcher of all pitchers. If Harvey has half his career, he'll have done incredibly well. Whatever happens, it will be worth the watching. A version of this article appeared April 29, 2013, on page A25 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Why Matt Harvey Is Not Dwight Gooden. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323982704578450970122629446.html?mod=WSJ_NY_Sports_LEFT_LEADNewsCollection

Is Harvey pitching tonight?

Mets � Willets Point wrote: Frayed Knot wrote: Geez, half a page and nobody has mentioned Piazza yet?!! Don't you remember he had a press conference to declare his heterosexuality?

Edgy MD wrote: Is this going to be the "Matt Harvey Deserves His Own Thread" thread? Matt Harvey leads* all major leaguers, including position players, in WAR. * Tied with Clay Buchholz

Edgy MD wrote: Is this going to be the "Matt Harvey Deserves His Own Thread" thread?

From Grantland's Bake Shop Mailbag: The prospect of Matt Harvey's bright future combined with young talent like Zack Wheeler and Travis d'Arnaud seems too good to be true, so when will Harvey have his serious injury and subsequent decline in production? Does it happen this season and leave Mets' fans wondering about what could have been or is it after we give him a huge contract in a few years, basically throwing the money down the drain? Not sure which one I would rather have, but I just know that it's happening. � Kirk M. I'm not sure what was more depressing about this e-mail: that I found myself nodding grimly while reading it, or that Kirk M.'s school e-mail address made it apparent that he was, by my math, still in diapers the year the Mets last made the World Series. Anyway, this is the type of question that calls for some Expert Input, so I polled a few of my favorite Mets enthusiasts. Their answers may surprise you. Jason Fry, among many other things one of the men behind the blog Faith and Fear in Flushing, opted to stick with the "faith" part of the equation: Kirk, man, you're way too young to be mainlining despair. It'll be all that's left to you by your forties, so don't start now. OK, yeah, the biggest danger to pitchers' health is pitching, and the Mets have operated under a little black cloud since the last day of 2007. But better days are ahead, I promise. And in the meantime, there will be sunshine and baseball talk and cold beer. (Though not for you just yet.) So enjoy today � particularly if Matt Harvey's on the hill. Adam Mirchin, the person whose Twitter account I probably favorite most frequently (and even though I'm pretty slutty with my Twitter favoriting, that really means something), got a little riled up by the question: As anyone familiar with my Twitter feed knows, I steadfastly maintain that Mets fans are more embarrassing than the Mets organization. It basically goes like this: any fan base that has experienced a semblance of prolonged heartache immediately tries to corner the market on "being so freakin' unlucky and/or beaten down, man." Somehow, it's worse in New York. These are the fans that are always whining about "what is the plan?" as if it's actually reasonable to expect the front office to take to the airwaves with 75 detailed bullet points outlining, step-by-step, the exact blueprint � WHERE IS WHEELER? HE'S READY! SURE, I CAN'T PICK HIM OUT OF A POLICE LINEUP, BUT I KNOW: HE'S READY FOR NEW YORK. SANDY ALDERSON IS SUCH AN IDIOT � (His e-mail went on like that for another four or five paragraphs, in which he somehow managed to touch on both Darrelle Revis and the start times for World Series games, and quite frankly I'm a little worried he might be wandering around Manhattan in a catcher's mask and fugue state right now.) David Roth of the Classical had a similar take: New Yorkers have a tendency to exaggerate the magnitude and significance of their experience, which along with totally justified envy of our excellent delicatessens is why so many people dislike us. All true. Still, my own reaction to the question probably syncs up most closely with Sports on Earth's Emma Span: First things first: It's never what you expect. Something terrible will happen, yes, but never the terrible thing you are prepared for. You don't get mugged when you're worried about getting mugged; that's when you get hit by a car. I'm embroidering that last line on a pillow. An orange-and-blue pillow, of course. Let's go Mets! http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/9203748/the-bake-shop-mailbag

Tonight's guest host ... live from Miami .... Jackie Gleason.

Robbie Alomar I'll continue with the Hall of Fame theme: NTTAWTT!

Edgy MD wrote: OE: I hadn't realized the recent use of a park that is home to another team in the same town was a factor in who gets an All-Star Game. It apparently isn't much of one anymore. "It apparently isn't much of one anymore." What do you base this on?

Edgy MD wrote: And I never said you said she said she said, or so Edward Said said. It seemed worth underscoring. OK. But whom do you have in mind when you write that "the responsibility is hardly limited to the Wilpons alone"? The Mets best chance for a second Shea ASG was probably from 1992-1996. 1986 and 1988 were probably still too close to 1977, when NYC, if not the Mets, last hosted an ASG.

Edgy MD wrote: All that's true, but again, it's never been a secret that the team was disinterested in pursuing the All Star Game. And if that's something that disappointed/disappoints you, the responsibility is hardly limited to the Wilpons alone. I never said it was a secret. And my point was mainly to reject the MLB-as-an-obstacle-to-another-Shea-ASG theory.

"Harvey? Haaaaarvey? Oooooh."

Ceetar wrote: I always blamed MLB for the lack of another ASG at Shea. I had no idea. So who do I blame now? Every G.M. since 1964? Who knows, MLB could certainly have let it be known to owners that it wasn't much worth trying given the state of Shea with all the new ballparks opening that were options. Not true. In the NL, the era of ASG's in the new wave stadiums began in 1998. From 1986-1996, all six NL ASG's were hosted by teams that had already hosted an ASG during the Mets existence: 1986 - Astrodome (last held in 1968) 1988 - Riverfront Stadium (last held in 1970) 1990 - Wrigley Field (last held in 1962) (new lights - dawn of night baseball era at Wrigley) 1992 - Jack Murphy Stadium (last held in 1978 - just 14 yrs. earlier) 1994 - Three Rivers Stadium (last held in 1974) 1996 - Veterans Stadium (last held in 1976) This was when the Mets stood the best chance of hosting another Shea ASG. And frankly, I don't see how Shea, then, was in any worse condition than the six stadiums above. Enough excuses for these ********** owners.

m.e.t.b.o.t. wrote: in this case, metropolitan centerfielder jordanny valdespin hit a walk away big bang home run which resulted in a metropolitan win in the bottom of the tenth inning. superficially, this would appear to have generated a tremendous amount of WPA. however, the bases were loaded with one out, and the metropolitans faced only a one-run defecit.... Is it about contributing to a team win, or about individual accomplishments irrespective of team outcome? And how do you even begin to separate the two? Why did Santana practically* max out the scoring for his no-hitter? By your logic, because the Mets won by eight, Johan could've given up seven runs on 12 hits without jeopardizing the team win. Why then, was he credited fully for a brilliant, but according to your rationale here, superfluous performance? And then why does any Met, for that matter, ever get any Schaefer points in a team loss? * But see my ballot.

Benjamin Grimm wrote: Everyone needs to stop fostering the illusion that the position in the lineup matters. When it's your turn to bat, step up to the plate and do your job. What matters is who the pitcher is, what the score is, what runners are on base, not the position in the batting order. This. It drove me up the wall a few years ago when Manuel wanted to bat Reyes second and Reyes said he couldn't do that. Same crap with self-interested relief pitchers who claim they have to pitch the ninth inning to be effective.

TransMonk wrote: Duda moved to clean-up after Collins said earlier in the week that he didn't want to mess with a guy going so well. Good move?

"Is it too early to talk about Harvelous starting this year's All Star Game?" "With LaRussa out, anything's possible."

Matt Harvey is atop or near the top of the leaderboards in every major pitching category. Harvelous Harv currently leads the NL in the following categories: Wins WHIP Hits per 9 IP Games Started Average Game Score Opponent BA Opponent OBP Opponent SLG Opponent OPS Pitcher WAR Adj Pitching Runs Adj Pitching Wins Base Out Runs Saved Sit. Wins Saved Base-Out Wins Saved