Terry Collins calls out Mets in three-and-half minute rant

A 9-0 loss to the last-place Diamondbacks proved the tipping point. After Arizona completed a three-game sweep of New York Thursday, dropping the Mets to an even .500 for the first time since April 21, Terry Collins called out his players’ attitude and work ethic in a three-and-a-half minute rant.

“This is all our responsibility. I am the manager here. It starts with me,” Collins said. “As I have said so many times, I don't care who isn't here. There are no excuses. They are Major League Baseball players. I don't care where they came from, I don't care how they got here. The names on their backs and on the front of their uniforms say they are a Major League Baseball player. You come you owe a responsible to the fans, our fan base and the organization, to yourself the respect for this game to grind it out.”

With Thursday’s loss, the Mets’ fell to 5-12 in their last 17 games and 10-16 since the All-Star break. They are 10.5 games out of the National League East. Collins had been asked only one question in the post-game press conference before he went off: essentially “Where do you go from here?”

Here’s Collins’s full response:

Afterwards, Collins held a closed door full-team meeting. Said Neil Walker:

“"(There was) no berating, nothing about that. It's about keeping the positive, putting the blinders on, coming here on a daily basis with energy and playing hard.”

It’s unclear how the Mets will respond to Collins’s words, but they’ll need to rebound fast to stay in contention. The teams’ playoff odds have fallen to 17.2 percent, per Fangraphs, their lowest of the season.