{"id":1776,"date":"2012-02-06T03:46:03","date_gmt":"2012-02-06T03:46:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.beta.mbtn.net\/?p=1776"},"modified":"2013-12-15T03:51:22","modified_gmt":"2013-12-15T03:51:22","slug":"waiting-on-the-countdown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/?p=1776","title":{"rendered":"Waiting on the Countdown"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Still no news on the number front to report, although with just two weeks until pitchers and catchers report you&#8217;d expect the Mets begin to fill in the blanks any day now. As previously noted there are 13 players on the current 40-man roster who haven&#8217;t received a number assignment. Even following the &#8220;buy Andres Torres gear&#8221; link from the Mets&#8217; official website doesn&#8217;t generate a numbered jersey offer. Is there any doubt this organization is headed for Chapter 11? I&#8217;ve really begun to suspect that could be the biggest story of spring training&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/ecx.images-amazon.com\/images\/I\/51rFFwKB7eL._SL500_AA300_.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" \/>In the meantime, I have some projects from friends of MBTN to pass along. Alex Giobbi writes about the Mets, amatuer baseball and other stuff\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/bleacherreport.com\/users\/689624-alex-giobbi\">over at Bleacher Report<\/a>. Alex previously wrote about the Mets on his own &#8220;Bleeding Orange and Blue&#8221; blog and launched the MBTN Facebook page way back when. One of his recent pieces examines numbers the Mets could retire, in the event you haven&#8217;t had enough of that debate yet lately.<\/p>\n<p>There are lists and even more lists in Matthew Silverman&#8217;s new book,\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Best-Mets-Fifty-Agonizingly-Amazin\/dp\/1589796705\">Best Mets<\/a>. Matthew worked on the book version of Mets by the Numbers with me and has penned a half-dozen other works on the team including last year&#8217;s coffee-table anniversary. Best Mets is unique in that it highlights the lows just as brighly as the highs, so for every recounting of 1986 and 1969 glory, there&#8217;s a reminder of 1993 and 1979 torture to accompany it; equal ink is given to the Keith Hernadez trade and the Tom Seaver trade, and so on. It&#8217;s non-fiction after all. As with Matt&#8217;s other works and his\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/metsilverman.com\/\">website<\/a>, its jammed with interesting sidebars and asides that only a fan would know to include. Check it out!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Still no news on the number front to report, although with just two weeks until pitchers and catchers report you&#8217;d expect the Mets begin to fill in the blanks any day now. As previously noted there are 13 players on the current 40-man roster who haven&#8217;t received a number assignment. Even following the &#8220;buy Andres &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/?p=1776\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Waiting on the Countdown&#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":[],"class_list":["post-1776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1776","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=1776"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1776\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1777,"href":"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1776\/revisions\/1777"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}