At present, the Mets are bad. They're 8 1/2 games behind the Nationals in the NL East and on pace for 92 losses. In a very related matter, the Mets are also very injured. Right now, they have eight players on the disabled list, most notably Yoenis Cespedes, Noah Syndergaard, Steven Matz, Jeurys Familia, David Wright, and Asdrubal Cabrera. As the Syndergaard injury reminded us, the Mets' handling of all these injuries has been marked by some degree of dysfunction.
The latest Met malady belongs to outfielder Jay Bruce, who exited Tuesday's game with lower back tightness and then didn't play Wednesday. While there's no indication it's serious, Bruce has been something of a bright spot for the Mets this season, and thus it's a concern.
Anyhow, as Fred Kerber of the New York Post reports, Collins, after batting down an initial question about Bruce's status on Wednesday, took part in this somewhat cryptic exchange ...
"I'm not at liberty to discuss any injury situation. He'll be in there when he's in there," said Collins.
OK, so could Collins at least acknowledge if Bruce were available to pinch hit?
"No."
To be clear, that was a "no" from Collins about whether he could comment, not a no about Bruce's availability.
Maybe Collins is just tired of talking about all those Mets injuries -- an understandable feeling, to be sure -- and decided this was the easiest way out. Or maybe the Mets' front office has indeed told their skipper that he can't talk about injuries anymore. If so, that's a puzzling strategy by a front office that's terminally ham-fisted when it comes to handling injuries. It's also not certain what the upside of such an approach would be. It's not as though the media covering the Mets are just going to let the subject go -- not when injuries are so central to the story of the 2017 Mets thus far.
The 2017 Mets are bad, you see. The 2017 Mets are also weird. Weird and bad. The Mets.
