MLB

Mets’ closing kick earned Collins a new 2-year deal

In the end, Terry Collins didn’t need a playoff appearance or even a winning season to keep his job as Mets manager — just a strong finish to 2013.

On Monday, the Mets rewarded the 64-year-old Collins and provided the club a sense of stability, giving him a new two-year contract that carries a club option for 2016.

“If you look at the last 100 games of the season, we played .500 baseball,” general manager Sandy Alderson said at a Citi Field press conference to announce Collins’ return. “In many ways, Terry had an outstanding year. The team never quit, continued to play hard, continued to play with the resources it had at hand and finish as well as we could.”

Since Super Tuesday — the day Zack Wheeler arrived from Triple-A Las Vegas and pitched in tandem with Matt Harvey in a doubleheader at Atlanta — the Mets were 49-48. Along the way, the team lost David Wright to a seven-week disabled list stint and Harvey, who was sidelined for the season’s final month after tearing the ulnar collateral ligament in his right elbow. Closer Bobby Parnell also was lost for the final two months to a herniated disk in his neck. The Mets finished 74-88 for a second straight year.

“Coming down to the last month, my focus was finish the season well, because the one thing that has happened here in the last couple of years, we’ve had bad Septembers,” said Collins, who guided the Mets to a 12-16 record over the final month. “I knew David was out and I knew Harv was out and I knew Bobby Parnell was gone, but that doesn’t make a difference. You’ve still got to go play good, and we did that.”

Collins’ staff will remain intact, with pitching coach Dan Warthen, hitting coach Dave Hudgens, bench coach Bob Geren, third base coach Tim Teufel, first base coach Tom Goodwin and bullpen coach Ricky Bones all receiving new contracts. Warthen, according to a club source, received a two-year deal.

Alderson indicated he decided “several weeks ago” he probably was going to retain Collins, who is 225-261 over his three seasons with the club.

“Somewhere along the line we realized we had incorporated a number of new players into the mix, we were playing hard, we were competitive every night, the pitching was generally very good, the bullpen was improving,” Alderson said. “It was a culmination of things, but I think over the last six weeks, two months even, the way the team had played had impressed me.”

Collins, Alderson and team COO Jeff Wilpon planned to depart for Port St. Lucie, Fla., on Monday to begin evaluating players in the Instructional League and charting a plan for the offseason.

“[Collins] held the team together. We played good baseball for the last 100 games, and that was very important,” Wilpon said. “Not seeing anything collapse and fall apart was part of what we were evaluating, so wins and losses did matter to some extent. But also seeing how the guys played for him, even with the adversity of losing some guys down the stretch.”

Collins, who had three-year stints managing the Astros and Angels in the mid-to-late 1990s, said the fact he could keep his composure in the face of difficult circumstances has probably contributed to his survival with the Mets.

“Each and every day you’re tested by that,” Collins said. “I will tell you where that all starts: it’s how the players react to it. If they sense panic, you’re in trouble. That’s the one thing I really made sure I focused on. ‘We’re not going to panic, because if we panic, they panic.’ ”