Hunter Strickland gained a reputation around Major League Baseball as a player prone to temper tantrums who couldn’t control his emotions, and he realizes it’s time to change that.
Strickland was released by the San Francisco Giants during the offseason and picked up by the Seattle Mariners, where he has tried to channel his competitive fire in a more constructive way. The breaking point for Strickland was quite literal: he realized he couldn’t continue to be the way he was after breaking his hand punching a door after blowing a save last June.
“I think what clicked is what happened last year,” Strickland said, via Larry Stone of the Seattle Times. “Obviously, that hurt a lot more than myself. That hurt my family, that hurt my teammates, the organization. I see how that turned out. I think that in itself was a big enough eye opener for me.
“It was all mistakes on my part, for sure. I think I’ve learned a lot from that, and I’m ready to prove myself in that aspect.”
Strickland said he had read a lot and also worked with his uncle, a life coach, to get better at controlling his emotions.
The reliever had already become rather infamous for staring down Salvador Perez to start a bench-clearing incident in the World Series and, of course, for sparking a brawl with Bryce Harper over a home run that happened over two years earlier. Hopefully those days are behind him as he gets a fresh start with the Mariners.
