{"id":9873,"date":"2015-01-08T12:39:24","date_gmt":"2015-01-08T17:39:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/?p=9873"},"modified":"2015-01-08T12:39:24","modified_gmt":"2015-01-08T17:39:24","slug":"nationals-hire-rick-ankiel-to-minor-league-staff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/2015\/01\/08\/nationals-hire-rick-ankiel-to-minor-league-staff\/","title":{"rendered":"Nationals hire Rick Ankiel to minor league staff"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/files\/2015\/01\/rickankiel.jpg\" alt=\"Washington Nationals v Colorado Rockies\" width=\"630\" height=\"420\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-9874\" srcset=\"http:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/files\/2015\/01\/rickankiel.jpg 630w, http:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/files\/2015\/01\/rickankiel-300x200.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 630px) 100vw, 630px\" \/><br \/>\nThe Washington Nationals have hired former pitcher\/outfielder Rick Ankiel to their minor league staff.  Ankiel&#8217;s official title will be &#8220;Life Skills Coordinator.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>A former top prospect pitcher, Ankiel saw his career flame from the mound as he surprisingly forgot how to find the strike zone. He later emerged as an outfielder who topped out at 25 home runs in 2008.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" lang=\"en\">\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/Nats?src=hash\">#Nats<\/a> announce they&#39;ve added Rick Ankiel to their Minor League staff in new &quot;Life Skills Coordinator&quot; role.<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Andrew Simon (@AndrewSimonMLB) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/AndrewSimonMLB\/status\/553235284998225921\">January 8, 2015<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Ankiel has not played baseball since the 2013 season and announced his retirement last year. Given Ankiels history it is hard to argue that the Nationals did not land the right guy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Washington Nationals have hired former pitcher\/outfielder Rick Ankiel to their minor league staff. Ankiel&#8217;s official title will be &#8220;Life Skills Coordinator.&#8221; A former top prospect pitcher, Ankiel saw his career flame from the mound as he surprisingly forgot how to find the strike zone. He later emerged as an outfielder who topped out at [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9874,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[499],"tags":[501,665,20],"coauthors":[6],"class_list":{"0":"post-9873","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-mlb","9":"tag-rick-ankiel","10":"tag-washington-nationals"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9873","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9873"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9873\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9875,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9873\/revisions\/9875"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9874"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9873"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=9873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}