A more positivetake on Ryan Howard
CLEARWATER, Fla. - Ryan Howard was the can't-miss at-bat. When the Phillies first baseman stepped to the plate, you had to watch because his power potential was so intoxicating. You never knew when a baseball might crash into the bricks in center field at Citizens Bank Park.
CLEARWATER, Fla. - Ryan Howard was the can't-miss at-bat. When the Phillies first baseman stepped to the plate, you had to watch because his power potential was so intoxicating. You never knew when a baseball might crash into the bricks in center field at Citizens Bank Park.
Now, he is the guy that nobody wants.
You would not have known that Monday at Bright House Field. The television news cameras all focused on the Big Piece's every movement as he reported for work the day before the Phillies' first full-squad workout of spring training.
At 35, Howard is coming off the worst healthy season of his career and it was preceded by two very unhealthy ones. As bad as Howard's season went, his offseason might have been worse, although his wife Krystle did deliver a baby girl.
Court documents from St. Louis revealed that Howard has been involved in a bitter financial feud with family members in recent years and just before Christmas general manager Ruben Amaro Jr. went public with his desire to rid the Phillies of their power-hitting first baseman. Amaro told the Daily News on Sunday he apologized to Howard for the comments, but that does not change the fact that the Phillies spent the offseason trying to trade him and could not.
The soap opera has made Howard the top story in this camp, but he politely declined to have a speaking part with the media on Monday. Instead, he engaged in a long conversation near the batting cage with former Phillies manager Charlie Manuel, took his BP swings and shagged fly balls in right field before signing autographs along the left-field line.
"You're the best, Ryan," one fan yelled. "Don't leave us. Stay here."
It's safe to say that Phillies fan is in the minority. The prevailing opinion is that the rebuilding Phillies need to move on from Howard and the sooner the better.
A far more favorable opinion about Howard circulated on the Internet in mid-November and it came from a fascinating place. Brian Mangan is a 31-year-old New York City lawyer and a devout fan of the Mets and sabermetrics. Fans of those two things generally do not like Howard, but Mangan is different.
The Howard scouting report from sabermetricians typically describes him as overrated and overpaid because his only plus tool is his aforementioned power. RBIs, according to the sabermetricians, are not a good measure of a player's value. Mangan, however, wrote an article for his website thereadzone.com that had this headline: "Ryan Howard is a Clutch God, Let's Just Celebrate It."
"It's a topic I found interesting," Mangan said by phone. "I'm a big sabermetrics guy, but I do have a bend toward traditional stuff. I feel like you have to mix things. You can't completely discount when guys scores runs or drive in runs and I think it's incumbent on the sabermetric community to ask all the questions."
Mangan, who also writes for metsblog.com, described Howard as an outlier and an RBI machine who has "confounded everything that baseball analytics have ever thought they knew about the idea of clutch hitting in baseball."
Without going too deep into the numbers, Mangan points out that even during his worst seasons Howard performed much better than the league average at making the most of his RBI opportunities. He also noted how the Big Piece has been significantly better with runners in scoring position and all sorts of other clutch situations. The evidence is overwhelming.
No one would argue that Howard had a good season last year, but he still was better in run-scoring situations than he was with nobody on base.
As a Mets fan, Mangan most remembers 2007 and 2008 when the Phillies chased down New York and won the first two of their five straight National League East titles. In 2007, Howard hit 11 home runs in September and posted a 1.043 OPS. In 2008, he hit .352 in September with 11 home runs and a 1.274 OPS.
"We'll never forget down the stretch in '07," Mangan said. "I remember being at games and looking at the scoreboard and you'd see the score change to 5-3 with the Phillies going on top. 'Damn it, was that Howard again?' You felt like you were watching history. He was killing us."
That's what a lot of Phillies fans say about Ryan Howard these days. That's sad, because, as one astute Mets fan knows, the greatest times in Philadelphia were brought to you by the slugging first baseman who defied what most sabermetricians think is possible.
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