Quote:
Originally Posted by Frazod
I'll always wonder if Ankiel's mental meltdown was inevitable, or just flared because of a perfect storm of playoff pressure and not having Mattheny there to be his security blanket due to his hunting knife incident. At the least it probably wouldn't have happened when it did, and we'd have gotten a little more use out of him.
Nice to know Mattheny's idiocy is still ****ing us up all these years later.  |
I tend to think that the kid was so messed up that it was inevitable. The more you learn, the more you realize that the kid was a ticking timebomb and I'm not sure how he kept it together as long as he did.
The most ridiculous stat line I've ever seen in my life is what Rick Ankiel did to Johnson city at 21...AFTER the initial implosion.
14 starts, 87 IP, a 158-18 K/BB rate. Yes, you read that right, in 87 innings he struck out 158 guys and put up a K/BB rate approaching 9. In those 87 innings he allowed 60 baserunners. It's just impossible to be any better than that.
What really pisses me off is that in 2002 they had him sit out the entire season with an elbow sprain...just so they could operate on it anyway and cost him 2003. After a nice solid stint in 2004 in the minors and even his brief splash in the majors, he hit one guy in a spring training session in 2005 and simply refused to pitch anymore.
He'd recovered, blew up, recovered, blew up. I don't think there was any saving him.
Hate it. Just absolutely hate it.