{"id":278,"date":"2013-03-11T17:35:00","date_gmt":"2013-03-11T17:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/staging.stub.com\/hq\/news\/yankees-pick-up-of-francisco\/"},"modified":"2013-03-11T17:35:00","modified_gmt":"2013-03-11T17:35:00","slug":"yankees-pick-up-of-francisco","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/yankees-pick-up-of-francisco\/","title":{"rendered":"Yankees pick up OF Francisco"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Tampa, FL (Sports Network) &#8211; Ben Francisco was released by Cleveland earlier on Monday, but found a home just several hours later with the New York Yankees, who agreed to a minor league contract with the outfielder.<\/p>\n<p>Francisco will be considered for a roster spot, according to team general manager Brian Cashman. The Yankees are going to be without outfielder Curtis Granderson, who broke his forearm earlier this spring and won&#8217;t be ready for opening day.<\/p>\n<p>The 31-year-old brings versatility with experience in all three outfield positions, making 175 starts in left, 39 in center and 123 in right over the course of his career.<\/p>\n<p>Also a serviceable bat, Francisco has hit for a .257 average over parts of six seasons and has tallied 49 homers with 189 RBI in 542 games.<\/p>\n<p>The journeyman outfielder was originally chosen by the Indians in the fifth round of the 2002 First-Year Player Draft, but has made stops in Philadelphia, Toronto, Houston and Tampa Bay since.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tampa, FL (Sports Network) &#8211; Ben Francisco was released by Cleveland earlier on Monday, but found a home just several hours later with the New York Yankees, who agreed to a minor league contract with the outfielder. Francisco will be considered for a roster spot, according to team general manager Brian Cashman. The Yankees are [&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":[59,58,60],"class_list":["post-278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mlb","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-yankees","tag-yankees"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278","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=278"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}