NEW YORK -- The bullpen door opened and the music started playing.
New York Mets manager Terry Collins didn't need to say how important he considered Wednesday's game against the Miami Marlins. His moves spoke for themselves.
Jeurys Familia for a five-out save in the second week of the season, when he had already pitched in the first two games of the series?
The season might well be "a stinking marathon," as Collins said Tuesday night, but the Mets have begun it running uphill, and their manager has started showing serious concern about it. His Familia move Wednesday preserved a 2-1 win, ending a four-game losing streak and avoiding a 2-6 start to the season.
Yes, this was an important game, as April games go, and Kevin Plawecki's two-run single in the seventh inning stands as perhaps the most important Mets hit so far. Logan Verrett's six shutout innings as a fill-in starter for Jacob deGrom look pretty important, too.
Overall, though, the Mets still aren't hitting, so even with Verrett's strong start and even with Hansel Robles and Jerry Blevins working out of a bases-loaded, no-out jam in the seventh, this was still a two-run game in the eighth. And when Collins saw Giancarlo Stanton coming to the plate with one out, representing the tying run, he went right to his closer.
Collins asked Familia to get as many as five outs in a save situation just three times in the 2015 regular season, never when he had pitched the day before. He went to him Wednesday, just as he went back to Jim Henderson the day after Henderson had thrown 34 pitches.
There could be consequences later, but Collins obviously didn't want to find out the consequences of losing another game.
