F. Scott Fitzgerald once famously quipped "there are no second acts in American lives," a fact to which recently released Dustin Ackley can sadly attest. Taken SECOND in the first round of the 2009 draft, Ackley may not be the biggest bust of Mariner #1 draft picks (Tito Nanni? Jeff Clement?) but he might be the most frustrating because we watched him fall flat right in front of our eyes.
And seeing him back with the Ms this spring only served as a reminder of his puzzling failure to live up to expectations... a sober reminder as we get giddy at all the young talent in this camp. There was no explanation, no excuse. After a first good taste, he just went sour in the refrigerator.
He was fast-tracked and in the majors in less than two years. He'd had a stellar career in college at UNC, posted good, not great numbers at AA and AAA in 2010 and came up after playing well in his first 60 AAA games of 2011 (.303 BA, .908 OPS). His first year in Seattle was quite promising, hitting .273 in 90 games.
Then who knows what went wrong. Except for a couple of dozen games with the Yankees in 2015, he never came close to hitting like that again, ending up with a .241 lifetime batting average. The radio/tv heads suggested he starting experimenting with his stance and swing ending up losing what he knew as he kept tinkering.
I always thought it was the stupid beard he grew. No, actually, I think he was psyched out by his teammate who had played with him at North Carolina, was drafted the same year by the same team, but in the third round, and come up to the Ms in 2011 same year... Kyle Seager. And from the git-go Seager was a better player. Even with his recent woes, Seager at his worst was a hard-hitting, gritty, superb infielder who just had trouble figuring out the shift.
Chalk it up to Tarheel envy.
All in all, sorry to see the Ack go. For the first few weeks after he came up, he looked like the real deal. Then... not so much.
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