{"id":1343,"date":"2010-01-22T21:08:26","date_gmt":"2010-01-22T21:08:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.beta.mbtn.net\/?p=1343"},"modified":"2013-12-08T21:09:29","modified_gmt":"2013-12-08T21:09:29","slug":"reporting-for-duty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/?p=1343","title":{"rendered":"Reporting for Duty"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Quick note on the developing\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/mbtn.net\/player\/matthews-gary\">Gary Matthews Jr.<\/a>\u00a0trade: If you remember the magical start to the 2002 season,\u00a0 Sarge Jr was wearing\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/mbtn.net\/number\/25\">No. 25<\/a>\u00a0for all of one turn at bat and one pinch-running appearance before being traded to the Orioles. No. 25 subsequently went to\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/mbtn.net\/player\/strickland-scott\">Scott Strickland<\/a>\u00a0when he was acquired days later.<\/p>\n<p>Today, 25 belongs to\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/mbtn.net\/player\/feliciano-pedro\">Pedro Feliciano<\/a>, and so unless Pedro cares to make a mind-boggling fourth uni-switch in his Mets career, matthews can find something else to wear. He was 24 in his ill-fated adventure with the Angels.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m not ready to say this move (reportedly for reliever\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/mbtn.net\/player\/stokes-brian\">Brian Stokes<\/a>\u00a0with the Angels paying all but<span style=\"text-decoration: line-through;\">$4 million<\/span>\u00a0$2 million remaining on Matthews&#8217;s contract) completely spoils the &#8220;No Stupid Moves&#8221; theme for this offseason but it&#8217;s not terribly great either. I am thankful they dodged the Bengie Molina bullet, and still think they&#8217;ll look for a pitcher via the trade market especially after letting Joel Piniero go. F all once and future Cardinals.<\/p>\n<p>As for Stokes, he did a pretty nice job amid meager expectations, but I think it&#8217;s good practice in general to shuffle these middle-reliever and bench types in and out with some degree of frequency.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Quick note on the developing\u00a0Gary Matthews Jr.\u00a0trade: If you remember the magical start to the 2002 season,\u00a0 Sarge Jr was wearing\u00a0No. 25\u00a0for all of one turn at bat and one pinch-running appearance before being traded to the Orioles. No. 25 subsequently went to\u00a0Scott Strickland\u00a0when he was acquired days later. Today, 25 belongs to\u00a0Pedro Feliciano, and &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/?p=1343\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Reporting for Duty&#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":[339,467],"class_list":["post-1343","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-brian-stokes","tag-gary-matthews-jr"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1343","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=1343"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1343\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1344,"href":"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1343\/revisions\/1344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}