Don’t Forget Ankiel’s Story
Back in 1999 I can recall watching a cheesy infomercial with my brother during a rain delay in which the onscreen personality pitched what he had deemed collectors baseball cards. What piqued our interest was not the actual set, or even the Keanu Reeves-esque acting, but rather that amidst showing off cards of Barry Bonds, Chipper Jones and Pedro Martinez, the guy enthusiastically promoted a Rick Ankiel card. Not really knowing anything about prospects at the time, my brother and I turned to each other, completely confused, wondering who this supposed superstar was that we had never heard of before.
Ankiel burst onto the scene in 1999 as a power lefty with the Cardinals. In nine games he posted a 10.6 K/9, fanning 39 hitters in 33 innings of work with a 3.27 ERA. Ankiel continued to show why his baseball card might be worth major money one day by producing a 3.50 ERA in 175 innings of work the very next season. He fanned 10 hitters per nine innings but lost a bit of control, with a BB/9 of 4.6.
And then the playoffs happened… in one of the most disturbing series of events I can recall watching on a baseball field, Ankiel imploded in the third inning of NLDS Game 1 against the Braves, not for mechanical reasons but rather due to a form of the ipps. He walked four hitters and threw five wild pitches before being removed. Though he laughed the situation off, more of the same occurred in the NLCS against the Mets as Ankiel continued to walk hitters and throw wild pitches.
In 2001 he made just six starts, walking 25 hitters in 24 innings before being demoted to AAA. Things only worsened in the minors and Ankiel soon found himself in the rookie league, quite the unlikely playground for the Rookie of the Year runner up just the season before. He thrived there both pitching and hitting, a bit of foreshadowing.
Elbow injuries and Tommy John surgery kept the former stud prospect out of action for the 2002 and 2003 seasons but he did manage to return to the big league club in 2004. Though he logged just 10 innings in a small sample of five appearances, his issuing of a lone free pass definitely induced sighs of relief from the Cardinals faithful. The success would be shortlived, however, as Ankiel’s wildness resurfaced before the 2005 season began. It was at that point when Ankiel decided to try his luck as an outfielder.
A knee injury kept him out of action for the 2006 season but Ankiel made the major league squad in 2007, playing 47 in games primarily in center- and rightfield. A +3.1 UZR rating coupled with a .364 wOBA helped Ankiel put together +1.4 wins in very limited time, a very impressive number. Last season he played 120 games, the bulk of which were spent in centerfield. Despite a UZR bordering on 10 runs below average, a .360 wOBA helped prove Ankiel definitely could hit at the major league level.
All told, Ankiel produced a league average, +2 win season in 120 games of action last season, incredibly remarkable given his past and virtually seamless transition into everyday outfielder.
Cliff Lee’s tremendous and out of nowhere season garnered much of the spotlight last season as did Josh Hamilton’s comeback from a drug addiction. In fact, Ankiel’s teammate Ryan Ludwick even earned more air time from most of the media. Very rarely have we seen a pitcher convert into an everyday position player and then it gets largely ignored upon actually coming to fruition? Ankiel might not be an all star or future hall of famer but his career has certainly been remarkable and deserves to be chronicled just as much as any other great story in baseball.
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Even more remarkable was that he just lost it. He was throwing pitches against the backstop. I remember feeling so sorry for him as I was watching ESPN…it’s really great he can have a career in baseball after such a tragic and inexplicable psychological block.
Of course… part of the Ankiel story includes PED’s… but I guess we can conveniently leave that out.
they were not illegal at the time, and were prescribed by the doctor to come back from an injury. it is also not proven that they help. so yeah, we can leave that out.
wow, you are one of those ignoramuses? not proven that they help? apparently, common sense and rationale aren’t important traits on your planet, either.
Wow….now HGH gives you the hitting skills to put up a .360 wOBA in the big leagues? They should call that stuff magic, not HGH!
Adam Loewen hasn’t forgotten.
Ankiel was the big story the year before, and you know that America has ADD. Also I think the HGH thing kind of put a damper on it, although, didn’t he have a prescription or something?
I’m going to agree – Ankiel’s comeback story started in 2007 not 2008. From what I recall he got quite a bit of national attention. I don’t think it’s accurate to say that he’s been ignored. Nor have I seen nearly as much national attention given to Ludwick.
Five wild pitches in an inning. To put that in perspective, his opponent that day, Greg Maddux, threw exactly five wild pitches in a 949.2 inning stretch between September 8, 1998 and April 29, 2003.
HGH use by an individual is not illegal, even today (they sell it in the American Airlines in-flight magazine, for chrissakes, you can order it from your cell phone and pick it up at the duty-free), and it wasn’t against the rules of baseball when he did it.
So yes, we can conveniently leave that out.
hGH also does not enhance performance or much of anything else. If you’re going to penalize players for hGH use, you may as well suspend Julio Zuleta’s teammates for benefiting from voodoo.
HGH is cheating in the same manner that steroids are cheating. I don’t know about buying HGH if you’re entering another jurisdiction where it is legal, but that’s completely irrelevant. Just because we don’t understand HGH’s effects particularly well doesn’t mean it isn’t a performance enhancer. It is. Many time’s it’s used to accelerate tissue growth when recovering from an injury. Bodybuilders use it because it has some (not great) fat loss and muscle building properties. You can get into a philosophical debate about what constitutes cheating, but when you’re getting a prescription from a hacks who went to jail, you’re cheating…
seems like if we “don’t understand HGH’s effects particularly well” then in fact we DON’T know that it’s a “performance enhancer.”
if you want to say that it should be illegal or that players shouldn’t be allowed to take it, that’s your prerogative. but you can’t say, “we don’t understand what it does but we know it helps athletes.” the two statements are contradictory.
Actually, it would have been much more accurate to say “HGH use (when ankiel did it) was cheating in the same way penicillin is cheating”, or “HGH use (when amkiel did it) was cheating in the same way creatine is cheating”.
Using steroids (or amphetamines) is, and was, illegal. They are schedule 1 controlled substances. HGH is not now, and never has been. To equate the two is ridiculous.
Bodybuilders use it for the same reason that 50 year old business executives trying to stave off age use it: Because they’re gullible. hGH has been studied, it has just not been studied exhaustively because 1) the initial results were so unpromising, and 2) the government is rendering it all rather moot by cracking down on any use outside of growth deficiency.
that’s like saying chewing tobacco is cheating. not to mention, tons of players did amphetamines, and players use caffeine, which is a proven performance enhancer. people just don’t want any “feel good” stories I guess
Let’s check in with Gary Matthews Jr.’s career for evidence if HGH is performance-enhancing.
Yep, it is.
HGH causes luck, now? Because Matthews’ 2006 was built on a 60 point BABIP spike, not some power spike or even LD spike (he hit more line drives in 2002 and 2004). His HR/FB rate actually went way DOWN in 2006.
I think you’re grasping at straws to try to find something, anything, to support a position you are sure is true. Matthews had a lucky season, the angels’ FO did what the angels’ FO does, and when it came out that matthews used HGH, it became a talking point- but HGH almost certainly did not cause his “breakout” season.
Like I said above, if HGH could do all the things these people say it does they would just call it magic!
these one person science experiments are great!
let’s check in with George Burns: does smoking cause early deaths from cancer? what, you lived to be 100 years old?!? clearly thousands of scientific studies are wrong.
also, it was 18 degrees this one day in january. that’s cold! so much for global warming!
A number of controlled studies have cast hGH’s purported performance-enhancing and “age-defying” benefits in doubt. The human body has a lot of compensatory systems to prevent oversignaling from insulin growth factor (the real signaling component of GH).
Now, if you give adolescents GH, that’s a different story altogether.
it seems that Ankiel’s mental problems have continued with his batting… it’s like he forgets how to play. maybe he has some kind of damaged muscle memory? he is a very odd duck. but his defensive plays are nothing short of astounding.
Time to switch back to pitching….
There are a lot of misconceptions and half-truths in this thread.
1) The only steroid that is classified as a Schedule I controlled substance is Tetrahydrogestrinone, famously known as “The Clear.” Other than that, anabolic steroids are classified in Schedule III, which means they are much more easily prescribed. Also, Amphetamines are actually in Schedule II, because they too are widely prescribed as medication.
2) GH isn’t controlled at all. It is basically a regular prescription medication.
3) GH probably IS a legitimate and effective treatment for something like Tommy John surgery and Ankiel stitched up for that. Legitimate medical treatments should always be excepted.
The early research on hGH for cartilaginous injuries did not go well. While that was the intended use and I agree that it’s absurd to limit treatment for serious injury because of moralizing about “enhancing” performance, this appears to be yet another area where hGH doesn’t live up to the hype.
I was at Wrigley the whole series when the Steroids story came out and watched him self destruct that series and spiral downhill for the rest of the season.
Couldnt have happened to a nicer Ped user.
not a word in the article on Ankiel’s hgh use eh?
Smoky Joe Wood used steroids. True story.
That must be why he isn’t in the Hall.
If taking prescribed medication to accelerate the healing process while on the DL is cheating then what exactly is TJ surgery itself? I would call a procedure that replaces a ligament with one that is much stronger than even the pre-injury one a performance enhancement. Guys often regain velocity they haven’t seen in years. If Andruw Jones had a procedure (take away his fork?) that gave him his bat speed from 5 years ago that wouldn’t be cheating? If you can show me he was an active MLB player using something that clearly enhances performance it to gain an advantage then that’s one thing, but taking legal medication to recover from major surgery is another thing entirely.
People should give references for their HGH claims. It would make it easier for people to sort out what is what on this issue.
According to Wikipedia:
HGH has been shown to make muscles leaner, but it has not been demonstrated to make muscles stronger.
It’s unclear whether or not HGH makes muscles larger.
HGH promotes resistance or faster repair of injuries.
“…supplying human growth hormone for athletic purposes is illegal in the U.S.”
Then, fair or not, taking HGH after Tommy John surgery so that you can get back on the mound quicker would be illegal (assuming the Wikipedia article is sourced accurately).
Also, if you know your baseball drug policy history, then you know that on June 7, 1991, commissioner Fay Vincent sent a memo to each team and the players union that stated: “The possession, sale or use of any illegal drug or controlled substance by Major League players or personnel is strictly prohibited … This prohibition applies to all illegal drugs … including steroids.” Treatment and penalties were outlined.
According to this Yahoo! Sports story: http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news?slug=jp-hgh061206
“Even though hGH is not classified as a controlled substance like anabolic steroids, it remains illegal to possess and use in all but three cases: short stature in children, wasting diseases such as AIDS and growth hormone deficiency in adults.”
Therefore, HGH use was in violation of MLB’s drug policy.
My thoughts:
Something that always gets overlooked in the performance enhancement debate is the extensiveness of a player’s use. Based on the information above and the fact that Ankiel used HGH for one year (during which he pitched all of 10 major league innings) it is extremely unlikely that his performance was actually enhanced in any meaningful way.
In a lot of ways, Ankiel use of HGH is like a hitter’s use of a corked bat. Both are against the rules (aka cheating). Both have no meaningful effect on performance other than perhaps THINKING you have an edge. How much that matters… who knows?
Bottom line: Was Ankiel’s performance enhanced by HGH? Almost certainly not. Did Ankiel cheat? Yes.
There is some evidence that Babe Ruth used horse steroids he got from his ownership in a horse track in NYC. If he took the horse steroids he would have consumed it orally.
Nonetheless, Ankiel is a juicer and should always be regarded in the same club as Barry Bonds and Aroid!. Remember Bonds only did HGH like Ankiel. They are guys who used science to get a big paycheck and likely shortened their lives while doing so… But if its cheating then it is cheating.
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There are some incredibly DUMB comments being made about HGH in this thread.
HGH is “magic”. Whereas steroids improve muscle recovery, leading to muscle & strength gains, HGH repairs tendons, ligaments, etc … everything … even has been shown to improve eyesight.
So, what would a professional athlete gain from stronger connective tissue, better eyesight, more muscle and strength?
There is a great article out there by a cyclist who experimented with HGH, and the dramatic results he saw in his overall health and development. As soon as it is reasonably priced, all guys that are in the 40’s through 60’s will be taking some version of it as a “get/stay young” formula (currently called “hormone rpelacement therapy”. It is also VERY evident, that some doctor’s lack in the morality department and will prescribe HGH for anything and everything (or has everyone forgotten all of the clients like Matthews Jr, Holyfield, etc from the major bust in Florida?)
But, yes, as everyone from athletes to bodybuilders can tell you, HGH is “magic”, and better yet, it’s not “testable” because it’s a naturally occurring hormone.
I am simply amazed at the lack of knowledge here on HGH. It’s THE ped.
A lot of folks hand-wave off the idea that PEDs make a LOT of difference and I do NOT understand why? Do they know something athlete’s don;t? They certainly think so. But, the behavior of the athletes indicates otherwise. Athletes go to extreme lengths and take career-jeopardizing risks in order to obtain and use PEDs. Why? Because they don;t make a difference? Or because they can make all the difference? I mean, like duh (as the kids say).
Stronger contact, better eyesight, healthier connective tissue, stronger muscles, higher hormone levels, etc … I mean why would an baseball player want any of that?
I love Ankiel, I love the Cardinals, but the HGH use is problematic, especially since much of his appeal is in his increased power numbers.