{"id":1720,"date":"2011-08-08T17:21:02","date_gmt":"2011-08-08T17:21:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.beta.mbtn.net\/?p=1720"},"modified":"2015-04-20T20:26:05","modified_gmt":"2015-04-21T02:26:05","slug":"let-the-mike-baxter-era-begin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/?p=1720","title":{"rendered":"Let the Mike Baxter Era Begin"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"23\"<\/a>How great is this lousy team? A day after losing\u00a0Jose Reyes\u00a0and\u00a0Daniel Murphy, the banged-up Mets go out and turn a 4-1 lead into an 8-4 deficit, then score 2 in the 8th and 3 in the 9th to walk off a win over Heath Bell and Padres? One star in the comeback was some guy named\u00a0Mike Baxter, who was recalled from Buffalo today when Reyes was disabled and doubled home a run in his first turn at bat. Baxter it turns out is a Queens native who grew up a Met fan and was acquired from San Diego on a minor-league waiver deal earlier this year. He’s wearing\u00a0No. 23, the same digits worn a lifetime ago most recently by washout reliever\u00a0Blaine Boyer\u00a0and previously by useful reserve types such as\u00a0Ted Martinez,\u00a0Tim Bogar\u00a0and\u00a0Julio Franco.<\/p>\n

Ruben Tejada\u00a0was back up in Murphy’s slot, still wearing\u00a011\u00a0and having a nice game. Other recent moves we failed to mention:\u00a0Mike Nickeas\u00a0was back briefly after\u00a0Carlos Beltran\u00a0was traded, but he was returned to AAA when\u00a0Nick Evans\u00a0(who naturally, cleared waivers again and accepted another assignment with the Bison), was recalled on Saturday.<\/p>\n

It’s a shame it’s got to end for Murphy, a real piece of work who probably cost this team three or four games with boneheaded plays alone, but hit and hit and hit and hit, and for that, I forgive. Along with Beltran (and to a lesser degree, Reyes) he made a complete mockery of my pessimism this year. Though even with the team scoring runs beyond my wildest expecatations, the trouble they’d encountered keeping teams like Washington and Florida off the scoreboard early and\/or late tells me the Mets probably didn’t have the pitching depth to make a run anyhow. But it’s been a fun season anyway, and even when you think its over, it’s not. Let’s Go Mets!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How great is this lousy team? A day after losing\u00a0Jose Reyes\u00a0and\u00a0Daniel Murphy, the banged-up Mets go out and turn a 4-1 lead into an 8-4 deficit, then score 2 in the 8th and 3 in the 9th to walk off a win over Heath Bell and Padres? One star in the comeback was some guy … Continue reading “Let the Mike Baxter Era Begin”<\/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":[439],"tags":[379,555],"class_list":["post-1720","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-shams","tag-daniel-murphy","tag-mike-baxter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1720","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=1720"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1720\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2287,"href":"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1720\/revisions\/2287"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}