Usually Terry Collins never misses a chance to use a lefty reliever. If you recall, he spent much of the previous two seasons bellyaching about not having a second lefty to utilize out of the bullpen. So it was a bit surprising in a game that lasted 20 innings and one in which the Mets used eight pitchers, lefty reliever Robert Carson was not one of them.

It’s only surprising because of Collins’ well-documented fetish for lefties. If it was anybody outside of the guy who is best defined as “matchup crazy,” we would just consider it a manager trying his best to win the game. Because why on earth would you want to bring Carson into a tie game at this point? Carson has pitched in 12 games and allowed runs in eight of them. In 17 IP he’s allowed 17 runs, 16 of which were earned. That’s an 8.47 ERA.

It’s my firm belief that managing your bullpen to maximize the effectiveness of a situational lefty actively hurts the team. But if you insist on operating in that fashion, at least carry lefties who are, you know, not sub-replacement level. In 157 PA against LHB in the majors, Justin Hampson has a .594 OPS against. By contrast, Carson has a lifetime .893 OPS against lefties in the majors. Yet Carson is the one drawing a major league paycheck.

But it’s not just that Hampson would be a better choice against lefties. Every single RH reliever in the pen does better against LHB than Carson. Here’s how the five righties in the pen have fared against LHB in 2013, followed by our second lefty specialist:

The decision to remove Collin McHugh from the roster to make way for Aardsma was … curious. Not that McHugh was pitching great but at least he could theoretically act as a long man out of the pen. You know, something that might have been useful in a 20-inning game. Instead, the Mets kept a second situational lefty, one who couldn’t be trusted in a close game.

Without a long man, the Mets turned to Shaun Marcum to soak up innings. The back-to-back rainouts played some havoc with the rotation and made Marcum available for this type of duty, even if he had no idea coming into Saturday that he would be used out of the pen. If nothing else, we see that Marcum could fill the role of long man if needed. He now has 43.2 IP as a reliever under his belt, giving him more experience than Jeremy Hefner in the role – with a better ERA, too.

At this point, we can only hope that Carson gets sent out when Zack Wheeler gets the call to the majors.

Meanwhile, every person has their favorites and their biases. The hope is that a manager’s strong points will vastly outweigh his counter-productive tendencies. Some might call Collins anal in his predilection to chase the platoon advantage. But it’s never going to change unless it’s hammered home by the rest of us that it’s simply not working.

It seems to be a strategy of certain people that if you repeat something often enough, it becomes true in the public’s mind – no matter how idiotic and demonstrably false it is in real life. No doubt you can think of certain politicians who employ this gambit.

At this point, there should be no doubt among those of us with a pulse and functioning eyes that Collins’ desire to have two lefties in the bullpen has been a complete and utter failure. Yet dollars to doughnuts that when the expected Wheeler for Carson transaction is made, the manager will lament having to go through games with only one lefty in the pen.

So, when this expected bleating about the need for multiple lefty relievers happens – do not mindlessly nod in agreement or sit silently, in apparent agreement. Instead ask a very simple and very necessary one-word question:

Why?

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