The New Powers-to be: Ryan Braun and Former Pitcher Rick Ankiel
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Move over Barry Bonds and A-Rod too! Slide over Albert Pujols and Ryan Howard, just to name a few.
For a rookie third baseman and former pitcher turned outfielder are stormin’ the NL with the smoke of their bats.
Milwaukee’s rookie third baseman Ryan Braun made his MLB debut on May 25. Since then and through the ensuing 77 games, Braun has been on a torrid pace as this write-up by Baseball Analysts will attest. He just killed the Phillies in their recent 3 game series with the Brewers.
I laid Braun’s stats out against Phiilies first baseman Ryan Howard who excited the baseball world and won rookie of the year honors in 2005 and went on to club 58 homers and drive in 149 runs in 2006. Braun’s rookie stats, laid against Howard’s rookie season, may be a measure of the impact he’s having on MLB in his first season.
Here are the numbers based on Braun’s first 77 games:
Ryan Braun 2007 Rookie Season;
Avg HR RBI Runs SB SO Games AB
.341 24 62 49 10 70 77 315
102 113 459 (projected)
Braun strikes out on average; 1 in 4.5 AB
Ryan Howard 2005 Rookie Season;
.288 22 63 52 0 100 88* 312
*Howard struck out on average; 1 in 3.5 AB in his rookie season.
His career strike outs on average; 1 in 2.98 AB. He has played 106 games in 2007 missing 18 games with a leg injury.
In short, Braun is Howard from the right side and with a third less strikeouts and with some leg speed. But defensively at 3rd base, it’s not yet clear if he is Mike Schmidt reincarnate.
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The St. Louis Cardinals, mired in a shakey 2007 season as defending MLB champs, were chomping at the bit to bring up 28 year old minor league prospect outfielder Rick Ankiel, of the Class AAA Memphis Redbirds who had amassed 22 home runs in 261 at-bats through June 30.
Just another story of a minor league prospect being brought up to play at major league level? Not!
Ankiel’s been there before, with these same Cardinals, as a pitcher.
In the 2000 season, he was hailed as one of the best young left-handed pitchers in the major leagues. He had gone 11-7 that year with a 3.50 ERA.
But something went wrong for Ankiel in the 2000 divisional series and in the LCS. Although the Cardinals defeated the Atlanta Braves 3 games to 1 in the division series, they lost out to the Mets 3 games to 1 in the NLCS as Ankiel walked 6 in his 2.2 innings in the division series while giving up 4 runs on 4 hits and walked another 5 while giving up 3 runs on 1 hit in 1 1/3 innings in the NLCS against the Mets. Ankiel’s wild pitches inextricably hit the dirt around home plate or sailed to the backstop.
Baseball Library recalls Ankiel’s performance in the 2000 NL playoffs;
Handed a 6-0 lead in Game Two of the club’s Division Series matchup with Atlanta, Ankiel endured a nightmarish second inning in which he threw five wild pitches — something no major-league pitcher had done in one inning since Bert Cunningham of the Players’ League in 1890. Given another start in Game Two of the NLCS against the Mets, Ankiel again couldn’t find the plate, allowing three walks another two wild pitches before getting lifted with two outs in the first inning. Manager Tony LaRussa elected not to start him again in the playoffs, hoping to avoid damaging the confidence of his immensely talented young hurler, but Ankiel was summoned for a relief appearance in Game Five and promptly uncorked two more wild pitches.
The Mets went to the World Series, losing to the Yankees in 5 games and Ankiel’s pitching career hit rock-bottom soon after and he was out of baseball between 2002-2006 after suffering injuries.
Ankiel was determined, however, to make a comeback in the sport.
Joe LaPointe of the New York Times comments on Rick Ankiel’s comeback;
His comeback as an outfielder, which began in 2005, was delayed when he missed the 2006 season because of a knee injury.
But his progress this year has been remarkable.
In a game at Iowa on June 16, he hit three home runs and said he felt as if he were “floating around the bases” after the third.
He got the call to the Bigs from the Cardinals in early August and has been a sensation ever since. In his first game back in the big leagues, Ankiel pounded a 3 run shot in the 7th amidst a Cardinal 4 run rally eroute to a 5-0 shutout of the San Diego Padres. Two games later, Ankiel plastered two homers and drove in 3 runs in the Cardinals’ 6-1 drubbing of the Los Angeles Dodgers. People who have seen Ankiel tell that his bat speed is perhaps the fastest in baseball, that he makes solid contact with everything he hits and what he connects with is plastered.
So far, Ankiel’s stats look like this for the 10 games since his recall;
Stats @ 8/22/07
Avg HR RBI Runs SB SO Games
.286 4 7 8 0 13 10
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