{"id":95326,"date":"2025-06-11T07:35:11","date_gmt":"2025-06-11T07:35:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/95326\/"},"modified":"2025-06-11T07:35:11","modified_gmt":"2025-06-11T07:35:11","slug":"new-mets-reliever-justin-garza-used-video-games-to-revive-career","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/95326\/","title":{"rendered":"New Mets reliever Justin Garza used video games to revive career"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Stuck in Single-A with his confidence dwindling, Justin Garza began to consider quitting baseball when COVID-19 put the world on hold in 2020.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>But as he took time for himself away from the field, an unlikely hobby helped the right-handed pitcher get his career back on track: video games.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201c \u2018MLB The Show\u2019 actually was a big part about me learning how to pitch and figuring out how to pitch,\u201d said Garza, whom the <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2025\/06\/07\/sports\/mets-make-trade-with-giants-for-reliever-justin-garza\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Mets acquired from the Giants Saturday<\/a>. \u201cIt\u2019s so realistic at times, just playing that video game.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The reliever made what manager Carlos Mendoza called a \u201creally good first impression\u201d Tuesday night, striking out both batters he faced to escape a jam in the eighth inning of an <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2025\/06\/10\/sports\/mets-rally-behind-stars-for-extra-inning-win-over-nationals\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">eventual 5-4 victory over the Nationals<\/a> at Citi Field.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Stuck in Single-A with his confidence dwindling, Justin Garza began to consider quitting baseball when COVID-19 put the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":95327,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2408],"tags":[5,162,4,61,1867,378,66,4343,4340,4344,4341,4342,185,428],"class_list":{"0":"post-95326","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-francisco-giants","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-giants","10":"tag-mlb","11":"tag-new-york-mets","12":"tag-ny-sports-minute","13":"tag-san-francisco","14":"tag-san-francisco-giants","15":"tag-sanfrancisco","16":"tag-sanfranciscogiants","17":"tag-sf","18":"tag-sf-giants","19":"tag-sfgiants","20":"tag-sports","21":"tag-sports-plus"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/114663582846808722","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95326","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=95326"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95326\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/95327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}