Ryan Howard breaks toe; season over
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Ryan Howard breaks toe; season over
Matt Gelb, Inquirer Staff Writer
MIAMI — No one moment can better characterize this cursed Phillies season than Ryan Howard breaking his right big toe while standing in the on-deck circle. He did it Thursday by dropping a lead pipe he uses for practice swings.
The $125 million slugger's season, the most trying of his career, is over. "It was a learning process," Howard said.
What was the No. 1 lesson?
"Don't get hurt."
The broken toe, believed to be a hairline fracture after Friday X-rays, will not affect his winter training program. He can walk down the aisle at his December wedding without a boot.
It will rob him five final games in 2012, a year made difficult on the final swing of 2011. His ruptured Achilles cost him the first 84 games and sapped him of strength at the plate.
Howard finished with career lows in batting average (.219), on-base percentage (.295) and slugging percentage (.423).
"I know I'm a better hitter than that," Howard said.
"His best years are ahead of him," Charlie Manuel said.
The Phillies sure hope so. They will pay Howard $105 million in the next four seasons.
Have a question? Send it to Matt Gelb's Mailbag.
His best swing of the year. I bet 1980 et al will blame his .163 ave and 4,867,645 SOs on this toe injury next year. The diff between Giants and Phillies? Giants recognized Zito's bad contract and demoted him. Howard continues to bat 4th.— Campatent- Who else would bat 4th in this line-up? Try telling me with a straight face. — mwcnabb
- pick anyone, Wilma, and they will be an improvement. Did you even watch any of the games? Howard was barely hitting above .200. — coloradoeagle
- Howard hit .163 against left handers.
That's down to pitcher level.— fmMD - Say all you want about Howard and his batting average/k ratio, but when the Phils had runners on base he delivered: .329 BA with RISP, runner on 2nd .294, runner on 3rd .429, runner on 1st and 3rd .333, runners on 2nd and 3rd .375, base loaded .556, runner on 3rd with two outs ..357....long story short when the Phils needed him to come through he did. I think its safe to say that next year if the top three get on in some way, shape or form RH will drive them in.— ESFjellin
- Maybe now this little piggy won't be going to market so much— Trashcan_Man
Charlie is right. Ryan's best years are ahead of him: his retirement years when he can sit back and laugh at how much Phillies money he stole.— redalfa- Lol. — dmn
- He saw the lead weight falling, but didn't move his foot because he thought the weight would miss him. Once again his season ends with Howard's calmly staring at a moving object, but not reacting.— orange rhino
- Howard's WARs over the last 3 seasons are 1.1 (2010), 0.9 (2011) and -1.2 (2012).
That's not a $25 million/year player.— mjcunn30w - I will give him one more year. He deserves that. I did predict he would be out of baseball in 6 years and that was 6 years ago. So I was wrong but maybe not far off. Give me .250, 40 Hrs, ad 100 plus RBIs and he's earning his money. I don't consider him stealing money because everyone is stealing money. He's got more HRs and RBIs than anyone in the last 5 or 6 years in MLB. So we will see.— georgekissel
- I would have grabbed my knee to try and prevent the truth from coming out.— 2ndNlong
- Play Ruf at 1B. Howard gets worse every year.— 4thand10
- Big Toe of the Bid Piece in the Big Bad Contract given by the Big Imbecile— warbiscuit
- Clueless Howard haters. 2nd fastest in MLB history to 300 HRs and you think he should be replaced by someone who has played less than 10 games.
Look at the stats for this year by ESFjellin above -- pretty damn good.
I'll take 250-275 average, 35-40 HRs and 120-140 RBIs every year-- regardless of the strikeouts.
— PhillyFanChicago
