Port St. Lucie, FL (SportsNetwork.com) – Daisuke Matsuzaka has apparently won the fifth starter spot for the New York Mets, as the team agreed to pay the right-hander $100,000 on Tuesday in order to retain his rights.<\/p>\n
The Mets had until noon on Tuesday to either pay Matsuzaka the $100,000 or release him and risk losing him to another team.<\/p>\n
Matsuzaka entered spring training battling John Lannan for the fifth starting spot and then had to hold off Jenrry Mejia late in camp. Lannan, a left- hander, is expected to start the season in the bullpen, while the right-handed Mejia will likely go to Triple-A Las Vegas and join the starting rotation there.<\/p>\n
In five games this spring, Matsuzaka pitched to a 3.86 ERA and struck out 17 in 18 2\/3 innings. He walked four and allowed 21 hits. In his last start on Monday, he allowed three hits and one earned run in six-plus innings, striking out five and walking three.<\/p>\n
Matsuzaka had signed a minor league deal with the Mets in the offseason. In seven games for the team last year after coming over from the Cleveland Indians organization, he posted a 3-3 record with a 4.42 ERA.<\/p>\n
Matsuzaka spent the first six seasons (2007-2012) of his big league career with Boston, which won the bidding rights to the Japanese star with a bid over $51 million. In 123 career starts with the Red Sox and Mets, Matsuzaka is 53-40 with a 4.52 ERA.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Port St. Lucie, FL (SportsNetwork.com) – Daisuke Matsuzaka has apparently won the fifth starter spot for the New York Mets, as the team agreed to pay the right-hander $100,000 on Tuesday in order to retain his rights. The Mets had until noon on Tuesday to either pay Matsuzaka the $100,000 or release him and risk […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[187,59,186],"class_list":["post-16644","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mlb","tag-mets","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-mets"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16644","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16644"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16644\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}