{"id":757,"date":"2010-04-05T00:34:11","date_gmt":"2010-04-05T04:34:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/?p=757"},"modified":"2010-04-05T00:34:11","modified_gmt":"2010-04-05T04:34:11","slug":"blalock-accepts-minor-league-assignment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/2010\/04\/05\/blalock-accepts-minor-league-assignment\/","title":{"rendered":"Blalock accepts minor league assignment"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/view.picapp.com\/default.aspx?iid=7125742&amp;term=%5c%22hank+blalock\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright\" style=\"border: 0pt none\" src=\"http:\/\/cdn.picapp.com\/ftp\/Images\/a\/c\/6\/7\/Rangers_v_Giants_a0db.jpg?adImageId=12113255&amp;imageId=7125742\" border=\"0\" alt=\"Rangers v Giants\" width=\"234\" height=\"326\" \/><\/a>Hank Blalock needed a second round of teams passing on him to realize there simply wasn&#8217;t a market for a guy who hit .234\/.377\/.459 last season.<\/p>\n<p>Blalock did smack 25 home runs last season but with him being limited to DH and occasional time at first base there simply isn&#8217;t a bunch of teams lining up for his services. After he failed to get any other substantial offers this winter he came to camp with Tampa Bay as a non roster invitee hoping to earn some playing time at DH in a platoon with Pat Burrell.<\/p>\n<p>He just didn&#8217;t perform well enough to warrant keeping on the roster and after he was told that Reid Brignac was being kept over him he vowed to reject a minor league assignment from the Rays.<\/p>\n<p>Obviously he&#8217;s calmed down after not getting a major league offer and has accepted the assignment to Triple-A Durham.<\/p>\n<p>A hot start or an injury are his best cases for returning to the big leagues.<\/p>\n<div style=\"float:right;margin-left:5px\"><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hank Blalock needed a second round of teams passing on him to realize there simply wasn&#8217;t a market for a guy who hit .234\/.377\/.459 last season. Blalock did smack 25 home runs last season but with him being limited to DH and occasional time at first base there simply isn&#8217;t a bunch of teams lining [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[59,254],"coauthors":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-757","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"tag-baseball","8":"tag-hank-blalock"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/757","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=757"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/757\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=757"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}