{"id":1139,"date":"2009-03-05T21:48:54","date_gmt":"2009-03-05T21:48:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.beta.mbtn.net\/?p=1139"},"modified":"2013-12-06T21:50:13","modified_gmt":"2013-12-06T21:50:13","slug":"high-in-the-90s","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/?p=1139","title":{"rendered":"High in the 90s"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I have my doubts that\u00a0<strong>Ron Villone<\/strong>, after 14 years and 11 teams, and presumably no longer on the juice, can actually reach 92 anymore, but that&#8217;s his number this spring with the Mets, who seem to be fulfilling their obligation to offer potential employment to all ballplayers originally from the tri-state area at least once before they retire. Villone is among a group of longshots like ex-Met\u00a0<strong>Tom Martin<\/strong>\u00a0and Mexican League import\u00a0<strong>Heriberto Ruelas<\/strong>\u00a0to provide lefty depth in the bullpen: The veterans like this often have an advantage in the early going since they&#8217;re in better position to reject the alternative of not coming north but I&#8217;d be surprised if the Mets get that point before doing something like signing\u00a0<strong>Joe Beimel<\/strong>\u00a0or\u00a0<strong>Will Ohman<\/strong>, who to my knowledge are still lefthanders and still out there.<\/p>\n<p>I refuse to get all caught up in the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/mbtn.net\/player\/santana-johan\"><strong>Johan Santana<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0drama: If he&#8217;s not available the first week or even the first month of the season, he&#8217;s not. But it&#8217;s safe to assume that when he is available, he&#8217;ll be fine. Yankee fans, were they rational, might convince themselves of the same thing with regard to A-Rod. On the other hand I&#8217;m quite worried about\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/mbtn.net\/player\/maine-john\"><strong>John Maine<\/strong><\/a>, if only after reading some of his remarks after a stinker in an exhibition vs. the Italians today (he walked the first three batters he faced and confessed to being &#8220;embarrased&#8221; and lost). If he has a counterpart across town, maybe it&#8217;s hard-drinking chubbster\u00a0<strong>Joba Chamberlain<\/strong>\u00a0whose been even worse so far.<\/p>\n<p>Lotta spring to go still.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I have my doubts that\u00a0Ron Villone, after 14 years and 11 teams, and presumably no longer on the juice, can actually reach 92 anymore, but that&#8217;s his number this spring with the Mets, who seem to be fulfilling their obligation to offer potential employment to all ballplayers originally from the tri-state area at least once &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/?p=1139\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;High in the 90s&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[335,221],"class_list":["post-1139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-johan-santana","tag-john-maine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1139"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1139\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1140,"href":"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1139\/revisions\/1140"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}