(A weekly look at the players, teams, trends, up-shoots and downspouts shaping the 2015 season.)

This isn’t Matt Harvey’s fault. This isn’t the fault of his team or his agent or the doctor who fixed Harvey’s elbow.

It’s Terry Collins’ fault.

Collins, after all, has managed the New York Mets to the brink of their first NL East title in nine years, and none of this would have come up had the Mets been irrelevant like they were supposed to be. It’s the Washington Nationals’ fault too, a little.

The 185-inning limit on Harvey, according to sources, was hard and fast and not to be strayed from. Everyone involved agreed. The only way it would become an issue was if the Mets – ha-ha – were somehow to scrape together all this young pitching and make do without David Wright and have Curtis Granderson become good again and then have the front office hit it rich at the trading deadline.

Then the Nationals would have to tank, and at some point the Mets would have to take advantage of that and believe in all of this.

Ta-da.

Manager Terry Collins has pushed the right buttons for the Mets this season. (AP) More

I don’t know if another man would have led the Mets to the same outcome – the verge of the same outcome – that Collins did. What I know is that Collins was the only guy on this particular top step, juggling six-man rotations, six-foot egos, a desperate fan base leaning over his shoulder, a front office that didn’t always seem to know exactly what it wanted, and about a thousand other things spread over six months.

Collins was hired almost five years ago to replace Jerry Manuel and ostensibly to get the franchise, when it was ready to win, to the next guy. It became awkward only because the players arrived and were ready to be good at this, and also because Collins gathered them up and herded them in a healthy, productive direction.

Collins is 66 years old. He’s lost games and won them. He’s lost clubhouses and won them. He’s walked all the roads and done all the jobs. It’s what makes him authentic and likely more effective as a leader than he’s ever been. He fits in New York, where the first requirement is – or should be – honesty. He fits in that clubhouse for the same reason. I’m not sure Collins has the time or patience for phony anymore.

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In a league of Joe Maddon, Clint Hurdle, Mike Matheny and Don Mattingly, who’ve won their games and will get their Manager of the Year votes, nobody’s done more and put up with more and bled more freely than Collins. For a summer, he’s been the best of any of them.

Not that it’s over. He’ll still have to walk to the mound at some point and request the ball from a rested and effective and bull-headed Harvey, who’ll have developed a temporary case of amnesia. But that’ll be part of it, part of the whole Harvey mess.

But Collins only brought it on himself … by winning all these games.

No easy way for Matt Harvey

That said, Matt Harvey’s got to pick a lane.



He is a grown man, 26 years old, facing a difficult decision, one that could run his career – his life, even – in so many directions. Harvey, who has thrown 176 2/3 innings with 12 games left in the Mets' schedule, is surrounded by strong adult figures with strong opinions, people with his best interests in their hearts but also their own to abide by. They’ve gotten him this far, too, to where he perhaps hasn’t had to make too many consequential decisions, beyond fastball or changeup.

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