Rick Ankiel Is Spelled with a ‘K’
The story on the news feed is that Rick Ankiel has signed with the Nationals on a one-year $1.5M contract, but the story of Rick Ankiel cannot be told without the letter K. Though moving from the rotation to the lineup is an amazing feat, it’s worth wondering where Ankiel would have been without that special K.
In three seasons in the Cardinal rotation, Ankiel averaged a clean 10 Ks per nine – and the wunderkind placed second in the Rookie of the Year voting. He managed an 11.3 K/9 in the postseason, too. Though it’s tempting to say that those other two letters (BB) were the reason for his downfall (and Ankiel does have a lifetime BB/9 of 24.8 in his four postseason innings), no team would have spent so much time attempting to remove the Steve Blass from his arm if it didn’t also hold bushels of K.
Or maybe it’s actually sort of surprising the team didn’t try harder with the pitcher Rick Ankiel – his 2003 stint at Double-A seems to have been the nail in the coffin (8.1 BB/9), but it only lasted 54 1/3 innings. Perhaps his elbow injury in 2002 sapped whatever control he might have had and talented observers were sure it wasn’t coming back. In 2004 he began the transition to full-time position player.
And wouldn’t you know it, the letter ‘K’ has done a lot to inform his work at the plate as well. As Ankiel has made his way around the league with the position players, his strikeout percentage has slowly climbed upward. In his re-debut in 2007, he struck out 23.8 percent of the time and looked fantastic at the plate. That went up to 24.2 percent the next year, 26.6 percent the year after, and then a whopping 33.6 percent last year. His wOBA has declined accordingly.
Sure, it’s not all about the strikeouts for Ankiel the position player. Although his UZR/150 hasn’t stayed consistent, after almost three full years of data we can trust that he’s not a great defensive center fielder (-8.7 UZR/150), but he can handle the glove reasonably well and would be a positive on the corners. His career ISO (.194) is still well-above average, so he has some pop. It’s interesting that he hit a career high in walk percentage (the good kind) last year (10.8), but it was only in 211 plate appearances, and he’s more like the 2010 Royals version (6.9% BB, 31.5% K, .207 ISO) than the 2010 Braves version (13.7% BB, 35.3% K, .118 ISO) anyway.
The Nationals – who owned the fourth-worst strikeout percentage in the National League last year – have a hole in left field and backup center field. They will look to fill it with Ankiel, Roger Bernadina, Corey Brown and Justin Maxwell – but there’s little opportunity for a straight platoon among this bunch. Ankiel, Brown, and Bernadina are all lefties that have struggled against lefties in the past, and Maxwell has strikeout issues of his own (37.9% K in 260 career MLB PAs) to deal with before he can be considered an every-day player.
In any case, Ankiel will have a fighter’s chance at regular playing time considering the crew. If the newly acquired Brown is the new hope for the future hoping to overcome poor contact rates in the minors in order to take advantage of his athletic tools, Maxwell is the old hope for the future hoping to overcome poor contact rates in the minors in order to take advantage of his athletic tools. Bernadina is the ‘just enough of everything’ guy – but there’s not really one skill you can point to and say, yes – that’s what he can do for you. Ankiel? He’ll get you some power, and some strikeouts.
Ankiel the batter has now struck out in 27.1 percent of his at-bats. Ankiel the pitcher struck out 29.7 percent of the batters he faced. Somehow, this all makes sense.
With a phone full of pictures of pitchers' fingers, strange beers, and his two toddler sons, Eno Sarris can be found at the ballpark or a brewery most days. Read him here, writing about the A's or Giants at The Athletic, or about beer at October. Follow him on Twitter @enosarris if you can handle the sandwiches and inanity.
Strikeouts are fascist, he should try some ground balls.
Yup, more democratic.
I’ve wondered over the last couple of years whether Ankiel will give pitching another shot when his career as a position players winds down.
It seems like it’d be worth the risk — maybe he could play for a couple years as a poor man’s Carlos Marmol type of reliever.
Of course, if there are emotional scars attached to his final pitching performances, perhaps he’ll just walk away (no pun intended). I recall sometime a couple years ago when he made a throw into home plate from centerfield and it sailed a good 20 feet over the catcher’s head — and immediately the network (don’t remember which) gave us a close up of Ankiel’s face as the announcers chuckled a bit. It felt wrong.
I remember watching a game in 2007 or 2008 where Ankiel threw a runner out from deep left field that he had no business getting out. I have never seen such a perfect strike from the outfield to the catcher. I was watching with a friend at the time and he asked why Ankiel couldn’t throw like that from the mound.
In one game, Ankiel threw out 2 runners at 3rd vs. COL, one of them was from da-eeep left-center.
The announcers, of course, capitalized on the situation to make some “perfect strike” comments.
Ankiel’s probs have rarely been physical, when healthy of course. The speculation on the cause of his troubles have been all over the map. When you have an imprisoned father on drug charges, the speculation tends to do that.
One also has to wonder how much of his early success (hitting for power) was, in part, due to him using growth hormone … y’know to recover from surgery.
The team didn’t give up on Ankiel as a pitcher, Rick did. He had made some progress, but having it fall apart again in AA was the final straw and he made the decision to switch, which was given a (Probably reluctant) blessing by the organization. I wish he hadn’t, but I can’t even imagine the frustration he must have been feeling between the injuries and the control problems.
I was going to say the same thing. Also, he didn’t begin the transition to being a full-time position player until 2005. He was still pitching in ’04 (including a handful of games in the majors) and even in the early part of spring training in 2005:
http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20050309&content_id=962551&vkey=spt2005news&fext=.jsp&c_id=stl
Rick Ankiel is actually spelled with 2 K’s.
At least they only need 0.3 WAR out of him, right?
I think Mike Morse deserves a chance to platoon somewhere seeing how he mashes lefties. He can give Morgan and Ankiel days off and play some first base. He needs to get some AB’s next year.
Ankiel making the transition from pitcher to outfielder so late in his career is obviously part of this. But when he’s on, his swing is so natural. Even if it is a swinging strike three….
In the playoffs against the Giants, don’t know if anyone remembers this, but he misplayed a ball off the fence… but recovered to throw a freaking missile into the infield from the wall. They didn’t replay his throw but just the play(I think it was ruled a double.) Obviously a guy who used to throw 96-98 mph on occasion and is a lefty will have a gun in center, but it was impressive nonetheless.
He also had an impressive HR into the drink that series to give the Braves their sole win.
Do we automatically assume Nyjer Morgan in CF? After last year’s antics, combined with .633 ops, is he really locked into CF, cause if I were the Nats I’d be considering that spot an open competition too.
His name is only 20% ks. Needs more.
His middle name is Alexander. Oh well.
BUT WHAT ABOUT THE INTANGIBLES!
I bet that postseason HR against Ramon Ramirez in the top of the 11th raised his worth by $1M xD
Mark Reynolds is also spelled with a K. Apparently hitters who swing for the downs on every pitch have value in this game.