Hour 4: Terry Collins on Carlos Mendoza Firing and the Mets' Future

**Craig Carton** (0:03)
What a beautiful Friday.
It'll make tonight's Game of City feel pretty interesting, though, right?
New manager, nobody knows anything about him, really. Let's see how you've read up on him lately. The New York Mets did a freefall. It seems on Twitter, one of the things that David Stern said today that people are having a tough time with, and that is that 81 games in, he said, I'm paraphrasing here, that we need to look into what is going wrong.
And people are saying to themselves, how do you not know what's going wrong, 81 games into a season, in which you're 13 games under 500, and just fired your manager. And that's I think a fair response from the fan base. Like, we know what's going wrong, you put together a bad baseball team. That's what's going wrong. You brought in guys that get hurt a lot, that got hurt. Now, three fair. You also have Landoor, who's missed a good majority of the season. Soto, of course, has been out a bunch as well. But I think one of the things that the fans are reacting to from the David Sterns press conference today is, how do you not know 81 games in what every fan seems to know? Now, that might not be fair response, and maybe we're taking some liberties with the game of semantics, but the fans did not love the David Sterns press conference today. Joining us now is our old buddy, Terry Collins, who obviously has been a manager in baseball. He actually resigned from the New York Mets, wasn't fired in the matter that Mendy was, but I'll have some good insight to it. Terry, it's The Carton Show. Great to have you here. How you been, pal?

**Terry Collins** (1:40)
Good, Craig.

**Craig Carton** (1:40)
How are you?

**Terry Collins** (1:41)
Nice to talk to you.

**Craig Carton** (1:42)
Doing good. I'm sure you get no joy out of this news today, having been in Carlos' seat multiple times throughout your managerial career. So before I ask you questions, why don't you just kind of give me your overview of what you thought when the news became official this morning?

**Terry Collins** (1:57)
Well, yeah, I didn't hear it for a while. And then when I finally heard it, I was a little surprised, especially after Leo last month, where they said, look, it's not a manager situation. He's going to stay. You know, and then a month later, all of a sudden wasn't good enough. But, you know, it's sad. I like Carlos a lot. He's really one of the good guys in the game. I thought, Craig, that he, you know, he was accountable for all of the decisions he made and all the time he was with the Mets. I thought he did a great job. Obviously two years ago, I mean, when they were in this huge slump and to get into the divisional, actually the championship series was a tremendous job. And so it just comes with the territory. And I actually called Carlos today just to tell him I was thinking about him.
And we both said, hey, look, this is what happens. You have huge expectations.
They're not achieved, they're not reached, and someone's going to fall on the sword of accountability. And a lot of times it's the manager. And I've been there and you think sometimes you're really working your butt off, doing a decent job, and then when the team doesn't play good, you're accountable for it. So that's part of the business and I feel terrible for them. But I just hope Andy and I like Andy Green a lot. I was actually the field coordinator when Andy was playing with AAA with the Mets. So I hope Andy, I hope something gets going where these guys turn it around and at least, you know, even if they don't get in the postseason, to make the last three months of the summer exciting in Queens.

**Craig Carton** (3:33)
Yeah, it's interesting you say that because most Mets fans feel like this season is a trap that you have 13 games under 500, you know, 10 games out of first out of the wild card spot, et cetera, et cetera, that we're now just going through the motions. You don't view it that way. You think there's something to play for still?

**Terry Collins** (3:51)
Well, I always do, Craig. I mean, you got to. This is the big leagues, you know, and you know, nobody feels sorry for you. Nobody on the other side of the field feels sorry for you. You know, and you've got to show up every day and get yourself ready to play because that's what your job is. You know, if you're a player and you just want to fold it up and then you don't belong in the big leagues. You know, this is, you know, people pay a lot of money to come to those games and they want to see the best effort they can see. And that's the only way that I believe players should go about it. Every night, every single night, you got to leave it on the field. And yes, sometimes that may result in somebody diving for a ball and hurting their shoulder or something else. But you know what, that's what the people pay for. And I think right now you're looking at, so let's just say the next 50 games, they go 35 and 15, you know? And gosh, that's going to get you right. That's going to get you back in it.