LOS ANGELES — He’s safe — for now.
With the Mets in the midst of a midseason swoon, manager Terry Collins isn’t in jeopardy of losing his job, general manager Sandy Alderson said Friday.
The Mets had lost 10-of-14 games entering Friday night against the Dodgers, and Alderson was asked if Collins should be concerned about his job security.
Alderson defended the manager against his critics.
“We’re a .500 team. We haven’t been moving in the right direction, I understand that,” Alderson said at Dodger Stadium. “We have a lot of people hurt for long periods of time, and we’ve got some young guys in particular that are not hitting, and we’ve got some younger players in particular that have had to try and carry the load.
“To put all of this on Terry would be grossly unfair, so from that standpoint there is no consideration of [a firing].”
Alderson was then asked about a potential breaking point.
“I don’t speculate about what’s going to happen necessarily two, three, four weeks from here,” Alderson said. “This is not a Terry Collins watch. I’m here because this is what was planned.
“I think it’s very unfair to put a lot of [blame] over the way we’ve played over the last few weeks on Terry.”
The Mets entered play 40-40 and four games removed from the NL East lead. Included was a three-game losing streak, during which the Mets scored only one run.
Daniel Murphy just returned to the lineup Tuesday after missing three-plus weeks with a quadriceps injury, and David Wright and Travis d’Arnaud remain on the disabled list. Another key player, Michael Cuddyer, had missed the previous two games with left knee soreness and hasn’t been ruled out from the DL.
D’Arnaud [elbow strain] is expected to return before Wright [spinal stenosis], but there is no timetable for either player.
Overall, the Mets entered play having scored two runs or fewer in 12 of their last 14 games.
A club source discounted the idea Collins should be fired because the players need to hear a different voice and message in the clubhouse.
Only helping Collins’ cause is the fact the Mets were .500 with a minus-19 runs differential for the season — a statistic that suggests the club has overachieved.
Collins was asked before Friday’s game if the Mets fell into the “overachievers” category or if the team was underperforming.
“We haven’t done some of the things offensively that we thought we could do,” Collins said. “And yet our young players have kept us in there — our young pitching has done a tremendous job, including the bullpen, so in a way we have overachieved in that department.
“What we’ve got to do is combine the two. We’ve got to get the offense kicked into gear a little bit and get some of the guys going that we certainly expected to make huge contributions and not expect so much out of the younger guys and allow them to compete at this level and certainly keep our pitching going, which has certainly shown it’s legit.”
The six games facing the Mets as they arrived at Dodger Stadium not only threatened to push Collins’ crew below .500, but to keep it there for a while.
Two-time defending NL Cy Young award winner Clayton Kershaw was the hurdle facing the Mets on Friday, and Zack Greinke (1.58 ERA) is the scheduled starter for Saturday.
“One of the things about being in the major leagues is every night you face the best of the best,” Collins said. “I’ve always enjoyed the game the most when you compete against the best there is.”