Will Collins Manage to Survive an Awful Season?

Angel President Tony Tavares was asked, point blank, if Terry Collins will manage the team next season. His reply was more of a blank point:

“I don’t know. I couldn’t tell you, just like I can’t tell you if Bill [Bavasi, Angel general manager] and I are going to be here,” Tavares said, perhaps foreshadowing a Walt Disney Co. sale of the team--and subsequent housecleaning by the new owner. “A lot depends on what happens the rest of this season, and how we analyze it after the season.”

Even if the Angels are sold, it will take months for the transaction to be completed, so Disney probably will remain in control of the team through 1999. That means the current regime will have the difficult decisions--Who stays? Who goes?--over the winter.

Collins, of course, will be on the front burner.

Should he fry?

Looking at the bottom line, Disney certainly has grounds to dismiss Collins. A team many predicted would win the American League West title is dead last in the division, 20 games out of first place, and embarrassing itself with lackluster play that seems to plumb new depths every week.

You’d find more cohesiveness at a Hatfield-McCoy joint family reunion than in the Angel clubhouse, where finger pointing and harsh criticism replaced back slapping and mutual support this summer.

Isn’t it a manager’s job to rally the troops?

Virtually every starter, with the exception of the departed Randy Velarde and Omar Olivares, has had a subpar season, and several key players--Chuck Finley, Ken Hill, Tim Belcher, Darin Erstad, Matt Walbeck, Gary DiSarcina and Mo Vaughn--have had awful seasons, by their standards.

Isn’t it a manager’s job to get the most out of his players?

Looking at the big picture, Disney must consider the injuries. Jim Edmonds, DiSarcina and Tim Salmon missed significant chunks of the season, Vaughn suffered a nasty ankle sprain on opening night, and though all have returned, none have played close to their capabilities. Belcher was also lost for six weeks, and Hill has battled an arthritic elbow all season.

“In his defense, Terry hasn’t been given a good hand to deal with this year,” Salmon said.

Broadening the big picture, Disney should consider that Collins led this same core group, minus Vaughn and Belcher, to the brink of division championships in 1997 and ’98. With fewer injuries, couldn’t Collins keep the Angels in contention next season?

Or is Collins simply not as effective a manager as he was his first two years? Tavares seemed to intimate as much when he said in a recent interview:

“It seems like people aren’t getting through to [the players] right now. That’s either the fault of the teachers or the people who are communicating. Or it’s the fault of the players because they’re not listening. Or maybe it’s a combination of both. That’s the kind of thing we have to look at in the off-season. We’ll leave no stone unturned.”

Two years ago, Collins got rave reviews in his first season at Anaheim. The Angels were in first place that August and playing an aggressive brand of baseball that had been absent in 1996. Collins and the Angels seemed a perfect fit.

“He’s intense every day, but not so intense everyone is walking around on eggshells, scared to death,” Salmon said at the time. “He’s a coach who keeps up relationships with guys, who motivates you every day, who exudes confidence.”

Is the same guy managing the Angels today?

“Yes,” Salmon said. “But when you’re losing, there are 25 guys in here who have problems. Everyone starts pointing fingers.”

In 1997, DiSarcina liked it that Collins “can take a joke. . . . He’s not a my-way-or-the-highway type. A lot of managers keep their distance from you. They don’t want to get too involved. But . . . he doesn’t have that stiff-arm mentality.”

What about 1999?

“He doesn’t do that stuff as much,” DiSarcina said. “Maybe we’ve mentally beat him down a bit.”

Indeed, the Angels, as Salmon says, “are like a bunch of whipped pups.” And they’ve been so lacking in energy some nights that Tavares wonders if “there’s a pulse sometimes down there.”

That raises another delicate issue, one Disney must grapple with. Has this team quit on Collins? If the answer is yes, then either Collins--or a whole bunch of players--must go.

“But I don’t think teams quit on managers, they quit on themselves,” DiSarcina said. “If you’re not giving an effort, that’s not the manager’s fault. If you play in the big leagues and need someone else to motivate you, you don’t belong here, and you won’t last long.”

DiSarcina believes it would be unfair to evaluate Collins solely on this horrendous season, just as it might not be wise to give up on a good player after one awful year.

Of course, with a pool of talented potential managers already formed--Phil Garner and former Angel MVP Don Baylor are possibilities, or the Angels could consider a Dave Stewart-Davey Lopes GM-manager package--Disney might feel the time is right for a change.

“Maybe the best thing for us will be four long months away from each other, when we can reflect on lessons learned,” DiSarcina said. “There’s no doubt we can win with Terry here. We’ve had two good years with him and added Mo. The talent here just isn’t playing up to its capabilities.”

It bothers closer Troy Percival that Collins is even the focus of such speculation.

“He’s doing a good job, and we’re playing like crap,” he said. “To suggest he might be a cause is beating a dead horse, because he’s already taken enough abuse.”