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Terry Collins unleashes huge rant after flailing Mets get swept

Liz Roscher

The New York Mets’ most recent loss, Thursday’s 9-0 drubbing at the hands of the Arizona Diamondbacks, triggered something in manager Terry Collins. After his team had left the field, he made his way to the press room and unleashed some harsh words about the state of the Mets.

The only thing missing from that rant is a mic drop. Here’s the transcript of his rant, courtesy of MLB.com’s Mets beat writer Anthony DiComo.

As far as rants go, that’s a pretty epic one. He touched on everything, from not making excuses to grinding out at-bats and having passion to play every day.

That was indeed all he had to say. Well, to the press, at least. He got up and walked into the clubhouse, closed the door, and started a team meeting that lasted a half hour.

Despite the tone of the team meeting, Collins seems like he’s at the end of his rope. A manager can only do so much, and this is him doing the very last thing he can do to get his players to wake up. But it’s also possible that no matter the talent on the team, time and injuries might mean that this isn’t the Mets’ year.

Terry Collins, mid-rant.
Terry Collins, mid-rant.

After their loss today, the Mets are at .500, a record they haven’t had since April 12. They’re 10-16 in the second half. The disabled list has eaten some of their most important players, like Lucas Duda, David Wright, Asdrubal Cabrera, and Yoenis Cespedes. Since being traded to the Mets on August 1, Jay Bruce has hit under .200. And Jon Niese had his worst outing since being traded on August 1, giving up of the Mets’ nine runs today. Nothing is going the Mets’ way.

It’s interesting that Collins mentioned the players in Las Vegas waiting to come play for the major league team, since in his game story DiComo points out that’s actually one of the Mets’ struggles.

Part of the Mets’ problem is that their daily lineup is constructed largely of players straight out of that Triple-A clubhouse in Las Vegas. Of the eight starting position players in Thursday’s loss, only two were in the Mets’ Opening Day lineup. And one of those, Michael Conforto, recently spent time in Vegas due to poor performance.

Even though inexperience doesn’t necessarily mean a player won’t be productive, it definitely seems like this is one of the Mets’ problems. After the meeting, Kelly Johnson shared his own assessment of the Mets’ current situation with DiComo.

Kelly Johnson, added that “I don’t think it’s effort” and “I don’t think it’s talent” plaguing the Mets, an assessment with which his manager disagreed.

Whether it’s effort, talent, or something else entirely, that doesn’t change the facts. As a team, the Mets are batting .237. That’s the worst in all of baseball. An offense like that isn’t going to help them make up three games in the Wild Card standings. If they’re going to vault over the four teams in front of them, and stop Terry Collins from having another red-faced vein-popping post-game rant extravaganza, that’s where they have to start.

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Liz Roscher is a writer for Big League Stew on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email her at lizroscher@yahoo.com or follow her on twitter! Follow @lizroscher