New York Mets skipper Terry Collins tells players to lighten up

NEW YORK -- New York Mets manager Terry Collins had a message for his players after Friday's 6-1 loss to the Colorado Rockies: Lighten up.

After the Mets lost their third straight game, Collins held a rare meeting and implored his players to stop putting so much pressure on themselves.

He even ordered music to be played in the clubhouse, which is generally taboo after losses. When reporters entered the clubhouse postgame, Bon Jovi's "You Give Love a Bad Name" was blaring over speakers.

The Mets (53-49) went hitless in eight at-bats with runners in scoring position on Friday, dropping their season average in those situations to an MLB-worst .202. Pending the outcome of Washington's game at San Francisco, the Mets had dropped a season-high-matching seven games out of first place in the National League East and two games out of a wild-card spot.

"First of all, we have a good team," Collins said. "We're going through a rough time right now. We haven't hit with runners in scoring position. Everybody knows it. We've got to quit rubbing it in our faces every day. We've got to lighten it up a little bit. We've still got a lot of games to play. We're not dead. We're still in the hunt. We need to loosen up a little bit all the way around. ... I'm a little tired of seeing long faces. We need to lighten it up, have some fun, and get back to the way we can play the game.

"These players, they're smart guys. They're getting it from their friends, everybody else -- 'You guys aren't hitting with runners in scoring position.' And so it starts to build and starts to build and all of a sudden they go up there and their heads are not where it needs to be because they're worried about making an out or not getting a hit."

Collins implored the Mets to focus on the positives despite mounting injuries. Center fielder Juan Lagares landed on the disabled list Friday afternoon with a partial tear of a ligament in his left thumb. He will require surgery that will sideline him for six weeks. Third baseman Jose Reyes has been out since Tuesday with an intercostal muscle strain on his left side.

"We put Juan on the DL today. We don't know about Jose; he may have to go on," Collins said. "So I just think a lot of these things pile up. I just said, 'We need to lighten it up around here.' We've still got good players. We've still got good pitching. We're, what, fourth or fifth in the league in pitching? Or third in the league in pitching? We've just got to quit worrying about all the bad things and start thinking about some of the good things and get ourselves ready for tomorrow night."

Said second baseman Neil Walker: "This is not the time of year to panic. The outside expectation is that we have to win every series. This is tough baseball. I've played in a wild-card race for the last three years [with the Pittsburgh Pirates], and we've gone through these exact same things in July and August. So the thing that you can't do is panic. You can't get too out of control. You can't get down too much. You just have to try to take advantage of every opportunity that you can."