Terry Collins, the Mets’ manager, walked into the postgame news conference at Yankee Stadium with his cap tugged down tight, his eyes shadowed. He was about to address yet another loss in a long slog of a losing season.
Collins’s inclination is to defend his players, but his patience is not infinite with pitchers who continually throw fastballs straight across the plate. “They can miss off the plate once in a while, ya know?” he said in a tone that suggested this was not a thunderbolt of revelation. “You don’t know what they are going to do.