Collins defends Murphy over Francesa’s paternity-leave rant

Daniel Murphy might not be inclined to take swings at critics of his decision to take paternity leave, but Mets manager Terry Collins had no need for such restraint.

“There’s nothing wrong with it,” Collins said. “He missed two games. It’s not like he has missed 10. When you start attacking Dan Murphy’s credibility, you need to look in the mirror a little bit.”

Among Murphy’s critics this week, when he left the team Monday to be with his wife, Tori, in Florida for the birth to their son, were WFAN Radio personalities Mike Francesa, Boomer Esiason and Craig Carton.

“One day I understand,” Francesa said. “Go see the baby be born and come back. You’re a Major League Baseball player. You can hire a nurse to take care of the baby if your wife needs help.

“What are you going to do? You’re going to sit there and look at your wife in a hospital bed for two days?’’

Esiason went as far as to say Murphy should have convinced his wife to have a C-section prior to the season.

“[You] need to be at Opening Day. I’m sorry,” Esiason said.

Carton, Esiason’s radio partner, said Murphy should have gotten his “ass back to [his] team” after a day.

For his part, Murphy took the high road. He didn’t respond, but did admit he heard about the comments.

“I got a couple of text messages about it, so I’m not going to sit here and lie and say I didn’t hear about it,” Murphy said. “But that’s the awesome part about being blessed about being a parent, is you get that choice. My wife and I discussed it, and we felt the best thing for our family was for me to try to stay for an extra day, that being Wednesday, due to the fact that she can’t travel for two weeks.

“It’s going to be tough for her to get up to New York for a month, so just to have that support system with her. I can only speak from my experience, but … she was completely finished. She was done. She’d had surgery and she was wiped, so having me there helped a lot and vice versa, to take some of the load off.’’

Collins defended Murphy like an angry father.

“Unfairly [criticized],’’ Collins said. “First of all, if you’re accusing Daniel Murphy of not wanting to play: This guy played 161 games last year, wore himself out, played through all sorts of discomfort. The man had his first child. He’s allowed to be there. The rules state that he can be there, so he went.”

Murphy made two errors and went 1-for-3 with a walk and a run scored in the Mets’ 8-2 loss to the Nationals. One of those errors led to a run in the National’s four-run seventh inning.

“It was my first time out there in a couple days, my first time on the dirt, so I’m got not going to read too much into it,” Murphy said. “[Tim Teufel] and I talked about it a little bit. I’ve just got to relax a little bit and make the plays.”