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What benching? Bruce’s surge lifting Mets
- Updated: October 1, 2016
PHILADELPHIA — Mets manager Terry Collins made one of the two toughest decision a manager can make, by his estimation, when he pinch-hit Eric Campbell for Jay Bruce 10 days ago.
The Mets were trailing by two with Bruce, at the time mired in a 3-for-38 slump and batting just .176 as a Met, coming to the plate as the tying run. The Braves inserted left-hander Ian Krol to face Bruce and Collins called upon Campbell, who delivered an RBI single.
The move paid off in the short term. But Collins risked more than a plate appearance. He was “immensely” worried about losing the trust of Bruce and with it, the clubhouse.
“There’s a lot of people in that clubhouse that are in his corner,” Collins said. “The one thing you can’t do is lose the clubhouse. You can’t lose the player, if you can help it, and you can’t lose the clubhouse.”
On Friday, Bruce homered and drove in three runs in a 3-for-4 effort, leading the Mets to a 5-1 win over the Phillies that dropped their magic number to one. It punctuated a six-game run for Bruce that started with a pinch-hit home run last Saturday and has seen him collect 10 hits in 20 at-bats — four of them leaving the yard.
The Mets hope — need — that punctuation acts only as a comma, not a …
