New York Mets manager Terry Collins is expected to retire at the end of the 2017 season, team sources told the New York Daily News’ Kristie Ackert on Thursday.
Collins or the team have yet to publicly reveal what the plan is moving forward.
However, the 68-year-old’s contract expires at the end of the year and judging by the disastrous 2017 season the team is finishing up, it should almost be expected that Collins won’t return to the team.
For a team that started the year with World Series aspirations, the Mets are trying to stay out of last place in the National League East with a 65-87 record.
While Collins has managed his teams out of games at times when it came to handling his bullpen, it would be unfair to place the bulk of this failed season on his shoulders.
Injuries ravaged the team and robbed them of some of their most productive players like ace Noah Syndergaard and slugger Yoenis Cespedes.
If this is indeed how it ends for Collins, who could be managing his final games at Citi Field this week in the Mets’ last homestand of the season, it would be a difficult way to see him out.
Collins ranks first in games managed in franchise history with 1,124 and second in wins with 546 over seven seasons. Davey Johnson, who steered the Mets to their second World Series title in 1986, won 595.
Like Johnson, Collins led the Mets to a World Series appearance in 2015, the franchise’s fifth-ever appearance in the Fall Classic, but they fell in five games to the Kansas City Royals.
The Mets made the playoffs the following season in 2016, just the second time in franchise history that they made the postseason in two consecutive years. But they ran into the postseason pitching buzzsaw that is Madison Bumgarner of the San Francisco Giants, dropping the NL Wild Card Game at Citi Field.
Should Collins leave, Bob Geren, Chip Hale and Dick Scott are early favorites for the job.
