Terry Collins is entering his sixth season as the manager of the Mets, and he does so for the first time coming off a winning season. Collins took over a Mets squad that was on the downslide and looking to rebuild from the mess left over from back-to-back late-season collapses in the National League East. The roster was completely overhauled with a few notable exceptions, and Collins proved to be the manager needed to keep a level head in charge of the team.
In a colorful interview with USA Today, Collins shared a myriad of thoughts among them, the sea of change currently going on in baseball and where old school managers and baseball personnel fit in.
“I’m not sure how much an old-school guy can add to the game today,’’ Collins said. “It’s become a young man’s game, especially with all of the technology stuff you’ve got to be involved in. I’m not very good at it. I don’t enjoy it like other people do.
“I’m not going to sit there today and look at all of these (expletive) numbers and try to predict this guy is going to be a great player. OPS this. OPS that. GPS. LCSs. DSDs. You know who has good numbers? Good (expletive) players.”
As far as the growing trend of relying on advanced statistics, there are front office execs hired to worry about all that stuff, but there is more pressure on managers to stay apprised of the advanced stats as well when it comes to making in-game decisions. It is true that good “(expletive)” players ultimately can lead to wins and championships, it never hurts to use a little more information available to put your players in position to win. Moving forward, it should be expected younger managers taking on jobs will utilize this information more and more. That just doesn’t seem to be Collins’ nature, and he’s not afraid to (expletive) let you know about it.
