{"id":2034,"date":"2014-02-13T08:40:07","date_gmt":"2014-02-13T14:40:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/?p=2034"},"modified":"2015-04-20T19:47:52","modified_gmt":"2015-04-21T01:47:52","slug":"meet-this-years-special-guest-veteran-closer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/?p=2034","title":{"rendered":"Meet This Year&#8217;s Special Guest Veteran Closer"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.beta.mbtn.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/47.gif\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-133\" src=\"https:\/\/www.beta.mbtn.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/47.gif\" alt=\"47\" width=\"58\" height=\"48\" \/><\/a>The Mets on Wednesday announced Jose Valverde as the second candidate to become this year&#8217;s Special Guest Veteran Closer, a role played a year ago by Brandon Lyon and LaTroy Hawkins and the year before by Jason Isringhausen.<\/p>\n<p>Valverde at one time was a heck of a closer for Detroit, but became something of a gasbag by 2012. One of his competitors in Mets camp is the mookish Kyle Farnsworth, himself a former 100-mph freak but more recently the kind of guy teams reach for when they&#8217;re unsure of the health of their closer. I guess the Mets sort of qualify.<\/p>\n<p>Farnsworth has been issued No. 44, which is the number I recall him wearing back when he was a phenom with the Cubs. No word yet on Valverde&#8217;s digits though he&#8217;s most often worn 47. That number currently belongs to Andrew Brown, whose own path to a job this year appears difficult, especially if Josh Satin really learns how to play the outfield.<\/p>\n<p>Purely as a matter of taste I&#8217;d prefer the demonstrative Valverde over the combustible Farnsworth but history suggests we stand a pretty good chance of seeing both, or neither. Let&#8217;s see how it goes.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Mets on Wednesday announced Jose Valverde as the second candidate to become this year&#8217;s Special Guest Veteran Closer, a role played a year ago by Brandon Lyon and LaTroy Hawkins and the year before by Jason Isringhausen. Valverde at one time was a heck of a closer for Detroit, but became something of a &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/?p=2034\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Meet This Year&#8217;s Special Guest Veteran Closer&#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":[411],"tags":[620,635,559,634],"class_list":["post-2034","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-met-mysteries","tag-andrew-brown","tag-jose-valverde","tag-josh-satin","tag-kyle-farnsworth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2034","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=2034"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2034\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2244,"href":"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2034\/revisions\/2244"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2034"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2034"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2034"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}