On Saturday night, Terry Collins acknowledged the importance of playing tight games and maximizing opportunities against the Nationals, as he believes most of their games against them this season are going to be low scoring affairs.
In the first inning of Saturday’s 1-0 loss to Washington, Lucas Duda doubled to left field with one out and Juan Lagares on first base. Third base coach Tim Teufel made an aggressive decision to send Lagares home, but Jayson Werth hit cutoff man Ian Desmond, who nailed Lagares at the plate pretty easily.
“Once in a while you’ve got to make them make a play,” Collins said in defense of Teufel. “The ball was sitting in the corner down there. Certainly you’ve got a guy who can run. Ian made a great throw.”
It was a gutsy call, and it obviously didn’t work out for the Mets. I wasn’t really opposed to the call either – as Collins said, these games are going to be low scoring and come down to execution. Teufel knows that, and he played it aggressively as a result to force Washington to execute. Unfortunately for the Mets, they did.
On the flip side, when opportunities to score are so rare, its understandable why people might believe Teufel was unnecessarily aggressive, especially with one out. If he had held Lagares, the Mets would’ve had second and third and only one out with Michael Cuddyer up in a favorable situation to score anyway.
Hindsight is always 20/20, especially when the Mets had only one other realistic chance to score for the rest of the night. But if Lagares had scored instead, the conversation never comes up…
Just Mets 