Terry Collins had no leverage in his negotiations with the Mets. He is 64. He is playoff-less in three locales as a manager. The other 29 jobs could be open and Collins probably wouldn’t even get an interview.
So when the Mets offered a new two-year deal with an option that moved him from a six-figure annual salary to seven figures — but just barely — it was not as if he could negotiate. He still wanted to be a major league manager and, thus, he needed to just agree, which he did.
Besides, Collins already knows that the contract runs through 2015, but the organizational patience will not. Which is why the only item Collins really wanted to hear from Sandy Alderson in these “negotiations” is that he will be provided enough talent finally to skipper a winning team. And the Mets GM said that would be the case in 2014.
Thus, we can now put both men on the clock. The official announcement is due Sunday, the last day of the 2013 regular season. Yet, Collins already is on somewhat shaky ground. Because his deal calls for somewhere between $1 million to $1.5 million a season — probably closer to the $1 million — and even the Mets could swallow that 2015 amount if Collins guides a fourth straight loser next year.
So, in actuality, Collins has a two-year contract with a one-year mandate, he is pretty much a lame duck again. There is no way the Mets will try to sell to their fans yet again that a team with seventy-something wins in 2014 should bring back their manager for 2015.
But it is really up to Alderson, therefore, to save a manager he likes. The Mets have big needs, bigger if Matt Harvey is unable to avoid Tommy John surgery. And in some ways the job got tougher yesterday.
The Giants reached agreement with Hunter Pence on a five-year, $90 million contract before the outfielder could reach free agency. Pence was not high on the Mets’ wish list. But Shin-Soo Choo and Jacoby Ellsbury are. And their agent, Scott Boras, is going to make his pitch from the outset — my clients are better than Pence and have multiple teams bidding on them and, therefore, please do not come to the table with less than $100 million.
And we are going to have to see the Wilpons authorize giving a contract for that much before we believe they actually will be playing in that realm. So it already feels like the Mets will be shopping in a different aisle this offseason, making it trickier to provide Collins the talent.
We already are seeing a budget at work. By sticking with Collins before seeing if, say, a Ron Gardenhire or Mike Scioscia became available, the Mets are indicating they do not want to pay big for a manager — at least not yet.
So they recommitted to Collins because they did not hold him responsible for the won-loss record — that he did as much as he could with limited depth, especially when injuries and trades exposed just how little depth the organization still has. They like his enthusiasm, work ethic, knowledge, and positive relationships with his players and the media.
“It’s well-deserved,” David Wright said of Collins getting a new deal. “What he’s had to endure here, getting to 2014 with the payroll issues, making the trades that we’ve made, with some of the injuries that we’ve had, he’s done everything he could to steer the ship in the right direction. Sometimes it hasn’t worked out, but it’s not for anything that he’s done wrong.”
Collins gets a two-year contract, but really a one-year judgment. Win next year or bye. Can Sandy Alderson get him enough talent for the task?