A Possible Dustin Ackley Adjustment

Sea animals had it pretty swell. They could breathe underwater and nobody was filling up their home with plastic and stuff. But, you can't stay in the water forever, so they say, probably because then you'd prune up real bad. Some sea animals tried out this new thing called land and for a while they were all stupid and flopping around and not breathing. That didn't work so well.

Undeterred, the fish or millipede or whatever-type things kept trying, probably because they had small brains, and eventually some stuck it out on land. It took some adjusting but eventually some thrived and grew and soon the wonder that is fried chicken was existed into the world.

That inspiring story is hopefully similar to how robots, far in the future, one day describe Dustin Ackley's Major League career. See, Dustin Ackley began somewhere and was all comfortable and good but then he wanted to be in the big leagues and the big leagues is a rough and tumble world that you can't just waltz into, mainly because waltzing is not a baseball skill. Dustin Ackley struggled. Dustin Ackley suddenly began striking out a lot.

We, passive observers wasting our precious spirit-given consciousness away second by second, noticed that Ackley was taking a lot of called strikes on pitches just off the outside edge of the plate. We cried and wailed and fumed and joked, all to no avail since we are, as previously mentioned, unacknowledged participants.

But somewhere, somehow, a message might have gotten through and been understood. For now, just recently and possibly a coincidence, Dustin Ackley is starting to swing at those pitches a lot more often.

See? To see more, I encourage you to don your wind suit and explore my post on FanGraphs.