{"id":11713,"date":"2013-12-19T13:54:00","date_gmt":"2013-12-19T13:54:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/indians-finalize-deal-with-closer-axford\/"},"modified":"2013-12-19T20:00:08","modified_gmt":"2013-12-19T20:00:08","slug":"indians-finalize-deal-with-closer-axford","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/indians-finalize-deal-with-closer-axford\/","title":{"rendered":"Indians finalize deal with closer Axford"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Cleveland, OH (SportsNetwork.com) &#8211; The Cleveland Indians have agreed to a one-year contract with right-handed reliever John Axford.<\/p>\n<p>Axford opened the 2013 campaign as Milwaukee&#8217;s closer, but was removed after six blown saves and was eventually dealt to St. Louis in August. Axford pitched to a 1.74 ERA for the Cardinals down the stretch and struck out five batters over 2 1\/3 scoreless innings in two World Series appearances.<\/p>\n<p>After saving 81 games the previous two seasons, Axford didn&#8217;t record a single save last season. Still, the Indians plan on having him open camp as the team&#8217;s closer.<\/p>\n<p>Behind inconsistent closer Chris Perez, Cleveland ranked near the bottom of the league in save percentage last season and blew 22 saves.<\/p>\n<p>Over his five-year career with the Brewers and Cardinals, Axford has saved 106 games while going 22-19 with a 3.29 ERA.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Cleveland, OH (SportsNetwork.com) &#8211; The Cleveland Indians have agreed to a one-year contract with right-handed reliever John Axford. Axford opened the 2013 campaign as Milwaukee&#8217;s closer, but was removed after six blown saves and was eventually dealt to St. Louis in August. Axford pitched to a 1.74 ERA for the Cardinals down the stretch and [&hellip;]<\/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":[54,53,55],"class_list":["post-11713","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mlb","tag-cleveland","tag-cleveland-indians","tag-indians"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11713","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=11713"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11713\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11717,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11713\/revisions\/11717"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11713"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11713"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}