Flushing, NY (SportsNetwork.com) – The New York Mets released former All-Star closer Jose Valverde on Monday after he coughed up the lead in a loss to the Pittsburgh Pirates.<\/p>\n
Valverde (1-1) entered with two outs in the eighth inning and the Mets holding a 2-1 lead. He was charged with four runs while getting just two outs.<\/p>\n
The Mets lost 5-3, falling to 3-9 in their last 12.<\/p>\n
They fired hitting coach Dave Hudgens after the game and named Lamar Johnson to the position. Hudgens was in his fourth season as hitting coach; Johnson was promoted from his position as minor league hitting coordinator.<\/p>\n
Valverde, 36, once averaged 38 saves per year over six seasons for Arizona, Houston and Detroit from 2007-12.<\/p>\n
He was released by the Tigers last August and signed by the Mets to a minor league deal in February. He earned a spot on the big-league roster after spring training.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Flushing, NY (SportsNetwork.com) – The New York Mets released former All-Star closer Jose Valverde on Monday after he coughed up the lead in a loss to the Pittsburgh Pirates. Valverde (1-1) entered with two outs in the eighth inning and the Mets holding a 2-1 lead. He was charged with four runs while getting just […]<\/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-19182","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\/19182","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=19182"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19182\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}