FJM is a closed forum, but we welcome reader feedback. We're especially interested in corrections of our work, and research (usually number-crunching) that we may not be able to do ourselves. Please check the comments section as well, where we often post readers' opinions, and, less frequently, announce that we were wrong about something.
You can e-mail dak,Ken Tremendous,Junior,Matthew Murbles, or Coach individually.
You're Ryan Howard. You won the Rookie of the Year in 2005. You won the MVP in 2006. You hit 47 home runs and batted in 136 despite missing 18 games last year.
And now, after 196 mediocre at bats, you're cat vomit, according to Gerry Fraley.
Dish: Phillies wise not to meet Howard's demands
Philadelphia Phillies general manager Pat Gillick plans to move on when his contract expires after this season. He will leave his successor, probably assistant GM Ruben Amaro Jr., with a difficult call: Should the Phillies keep first baseman Ryan Howard?
Unless you absolutely can't afford to pay anyone, why are we having this conversation? Throughout his career Ryan Howard has been one of the better hitters in baseball. He's still in his twenties, he gets on base, he hits a home run once every 11.5874126 at bats. That's good stuff. These are the players you want.
Oh wait, no. You're the Phillies. What you want is to pay Adam Eaton $8.125 million.
The safe answer is yes.
"Logic" and "reason" and "numbers" would say yes. But I ask you this: Volvo makes the world's safest cars, and does Volvo use "numbers" to test their cars? No. King Wilhelm VII hand-sculpts each car out of the indigenous Swedish Metal Trees. So you see, sometimes the unsafest choice is the safest.
The bold answer, the one that could do more for the club, is no.
I am fine with this contrarianism if you want to make a rational argument based on MORP or aging curves or some analysis of the current free agent market. That's what, you're going to do, right, Gerry Fraley?
Howard is increasingly becoming a Dave Kingman-esque, one-note player.
Oh boy. Dave Kingman's career OBP was .302. Ryan Howard's is .387. (Kingman's career-high OBP was .343!)
And for those raring to point out that Howard's current slash stats of .209/.316/.469 look like a bad Kingman year, I refer you to Howard's current BABIP, which stands at a shockingly low .252. Howard's career BABIP? .341. So yeah, that batting average is going up. Way up. Because Ryan Howard hits the ball hard and he is a baseball monster who you want to pay to keep on your team unless you're the Pirates or some shit. He began Wednesday's game against the Colorado Rockies tied for fifth in the National League with 14 home runs and tied for seventh with 38 RBIs.
That sounds wonderful. GET THIS ASSHOLE OFF MY TEAM.
But Howard was hitting only .209 with a sickly .785 on-base plus slugging percentage and was on pace for a ridiculous 225 strikeouts, 26 more than his record-setting total of last season.
BABIP. See above. And wow, those strikeouts absolutely killed him last year to the tune of a .392 OBP and the third most home runs in major league baseball.
Ryan Howard is a human-shaped anchor who will drag your team all the way to the bottom of the standings. He has never won a baseball game and never will, until he moves to China, where the fewest runs scored wins the game and the women have sideways vaginas and vertical smiles. But Howard has been going in the wrong direction for more than a year.
He followed up his 2005 rookie-of-the-year performance by hitting .313 with 58 homers and 149 RBIs with a 1.084 OPS in 2006. Then, he dropped to .268 with 47 homers, 136 RBIs and a .976 OPS last season.
A .976 OPS!!! How dare he (multiple interrobangs)?!!??! This was only good enough for 7th in the National League, tied with that other loser, Chase Utley, who I've been meaning to kick off the team as well.
Jimmy Rollins should go. Cole Hamels is dead weight. Give me Pedro Feliz, the ghost of Jim Thome and the corpse of Kris Benson and I'll give you a pennant and a roller-coaster ride of a season!
Howard's chase-everything approach has continued this season. He has been increasingly vulnerable against lefthanders, with 36 strikeouts in his first 84 at-bats against them.
This is a troubling trend. Of course, the possibility exists that Howard is already in the midst of a Hafnerian decline phase, in which case it looks even worse that the Phillies waited until he was like 39 to call him up from Triple A. But Fraley's not talking about denying him a $200 million, 8-year deal. He's saying just cut him loose after this year.
The Phillies are paying $10 million for those strikeouts. With Howard eligible for salary arbitration annually through 2010, that number will continue to rise.
If you can get him year by year until 2010, of course you do it. Of course. I'd sign almost anyone to a one-year deal. I mean, shit, you signed Tom Gordon to a three-year deal worth almost $20 million, and he was a retired 53-year-old jazz saxophonist at the time.
And enough with the "$10 million for those strikeouts" bullshit. Strikeouts are only very very slightly more damaging than regular outs.
If Howard's pattern continues, the Phillies should not continue to meet his price. The next GM will have to make that call. Will he be bold enough to trade Howard and get the offense-choking strikeouts out of the lineup?
If Ryan Howard hits precisely .200 for the rest of the year, sure. But pardon me if I don't have absolute faith in Mr. Fraley's clairvoyance. In fact, in a hypothetical league filled with baseball teams general managed with men like Fraley, I would happily snatch up the following hitters for my team, all of whom finished in the top ten in the major league in strikeouts:
Ryan Howard Adam Dunn Grady Sizemore Dan Uggla B.J. Upton Carlos Pena
The sky would turn black like at the end of 300, except with home run balls instead of arrows. My K-Men would be the most exciting, most infuriating team in baseball. Other teams would start putting infielders in the outfield and outfielders in the first few rows of the crowd. Daisuke Matsuzaka would commit ritualistic seppuku after getting bombed for 14 home runs. Then I would sell the team to Mark Cuban and purchase the lives of the scientists who taught monkeys to control robot arms with their thoughts. Not because I'm angry at them, but because I want them to teach robots to control monkey arms with their thoughts, and then have the monkey-thought-powered robot arms to fight the robot-thought-powered monkey arms.
Have you ever woken up in the morning and thought to yourself: "The hitter who hits third in the line-up ... Must. Look. And hit. And act. A certain way." No, you have not, because you are a normal human being. Repeat offender Bill Conlin is not like you. He's titled his latest column:
Bill Conlin: Utley perfect in 3-hole, so naturally...
The man is angry. Why? Because Chase Utley has been dropped one spot in the lineup for another guy who is also pretty good at hitting, Ryan Howard. But Howard isn't "perfect" like Utley.
I'll let him try to explain this because I cannot:
When I'm King of the World...
A luxury wing will be built at the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown to honor the game's most special breed of batsman: The No. 3 hitter . . . It will pay homage to the great athletes who hit with power and for high average. A majority of them also were above-average runners and defenders. They represent the highest evolution of the baseball art. Their names are the stuff of legend.
Already, Bill, dude: you have a weird number three hitter fetish. Relax. It doesn't matter that much if your third hitter has a really high average if his OBP is high, and it certainly doesn't matter if your third hitter plays good defense. Would you accept David Ortiz as your third hitter? Probably not. When you're king of the world, all designated hitters will be sentenced to death by firing squad.
Visit the Ritz Carlton Three Hole Resort and you will have answered the question: "Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?"
The Ritz Carlton Three Hole Resort sounds like something a frat guy would call a hot rich girl.
"Dude, I totally spent the night at the Ritz Carlton Three Hole Resort, if you get what I mean!!! I mean I fucked a girl."
Beer, high fives, exeunt.
Joe will be flanked by Babe Ruth (who could flat fly when he was young, before becoming addicted to lager and hot dogs) and Willie Mays.
Babe Ruth: 123 career SB, 117 career CS. Yeah, he tied the Yankee team record for single-season steals in 1921 (with a whopping 17), but he "could flat fly"? Let me ask you, Bill: honestly, who is more similar to Babe Ruth, Ryan Howard or Chase Utley?
Chase Utley is as pure a No. 3 hitter as the Phillies have ever had - average, power, speed. Now Ryan Howard, born for cleanup duty, bats No. 3 in front of Utley. He will steal triples and runs batted in from Utley with his station-to-station gait.
Wrong. Just flat-out wrong. Your claim: that Ryan Howard will steal runs batted in from Chase Utley. Last year, Shane Victorino ended the year batting in front of Utley.
A comparison:
Ryan Howard 2006 OBP: .425 Shane Victorino 2006 OBP: .346
That's 79 points of OBP. 79! A 79-point differential in batting average would have Bill Conlin-types frothing from the mouth. It would turn Pat Burrell from a pariah into a hero. The point is: Ryan Howard will be on base more than Shane Victorino this year, and Utley's RBI opportunities will not be stolen from him.
As for triples, Utley has 13 of 'em -- in his career. He had 4 last year. So yeah, if you want to turn two of those into doubles because you insist on batting fucking shitty-ass Ryan Howard third in the lineup, good luck with that, Charlie Manuel.
I'll be over here in my front yard carving this oak tree into a perfect life-size three-hole hitter. Hopefully, lightning will strike it and it will come to life, and it sure as hell won't be slow on the basepaths. That's what my stone-carved cleanup hitter is for.
You guys are reaching S.I./Madden cover potential.
Ryan Howard was on first base when Utley hit a double into the gap. Howard got tossed out at home.
The point? Howard definitely took away an RBI from Utley (since we all know guys like Howard are made out of stone) and theoretically, he took away an opportunity for a triple.
The Phillies are built upon old-fashioned scout values, which figures, because general manager Pat Gillick is still an old-fashioned scout, prone to traveling thousands of miles on late notice to see a low-level minor league player or an amateur prospect with his own eyes.
It's hard to make fun of Pat Gillick. He's won in Toronto, Baltimore, and Seattle, and he's close to winning in Philly, maybe. He's made some stupid trades, and some stupid non-trades, and he let Brett Myers pitch the day after assaulting his [Myers's] wife on a Boston street. But hey, nobody's perfect. And in the grand scheme of things, he's got a pretty good track record. Still, all this talk of traveling thousands of miles to see minor leaguers reminds me of something...Spideysense tingling...
...[W]hile most teams are relying on on-base percentage, the Phillies have traded some of the crown princes of on-base percentage (Jim Thome and Bobby Abreu), while making a concerted effort to create a lineup of players who score high in intangibles among scouts, like Shane Victorino, Aaron Rowand, Chase Utley and, of course, NL MVP Ryan Howard.
Is the best thing to say about Ryan Howard -- or Utley or Victorino, for that matter -- that "he scores high in intangibles among scouts?" Seriously. The premise of this paragraph is that while other teams go after high OBP guys, the Phillies and Pat Gillick are doing it another way -- they're building teams around guys with "intangibles." It seems to me that these OBPs --
Victorino: .346 (first full year...not great, but okay for a 4th OF) Utley: .379 Howard: .425
-- are pretty freaking tangible. As is an MVP Award. As are chase Utley's 32 taters and .906 OPS as a second baseman.
Rowand is another story. Here are some of Aaron Rowand's 2006 tangibles:
OPS+ 87 OBP: .321 EqA: .256
So what is Buster saying here? The Phillies, instead of going after guys with high OBPs, have gone after guys with great intangibles -- like high OBPs. Or low OBPs, or MVP Awards. Or bad hitting skills, or excellent hitting abilities.
For the record, there is one Phillies-related intangible that I care about deeply; namely, Shane Victorino's nickname, "The Flyin' Hawaiian." That's a good nickname.
Wes Helms, who will share time at third base this year, is never going to be confused with Miguel Cabrera in his production, but he is a well-respected professional and of the players with at least 150 plate appearances, he led all major league hitters in average after the All-Star break last season, hitting .385.
Let me rephrase:
Wes Helms, who is a pretty good 31 year-old journeyman, had a very flukey 240 AB last year, posting an OPS 200 points above his career average. In 130 AB after the ASB, he did this:
.385/.444/.654
In 110 AB before the ASB, he did this:
.264/.322/.482
Wes Helms ain't bad, but he ain't great neither. (Not that Olney said he was, obviously.) The only important thing about his 2006 2nd half is that it ended in early October, and will most likely have no bearing on his play in 2007. And I refuse to believe that his well-respectedness as a professional will help the Phillies' offense, or outweigh his 101 career OPS+.
What will help the Phillies' offense: Ryan Howard's total dominance of the game of baseball, Chase Utley blowing past his PECOTA forecast, and the Flyin' Hawaiian getting better at taking walks.
I would like to say, for the record, that I am very pleased with myself for the title of this post, despite the fact that the pun does not entirely work.
John Kruk, who is a MENSA-level genius, has this to say about Manny Ramirez:
When is this guy going to be held responsible for his actions? I understand that sometimes a star player gets special treatment, but this is supposed to be a team game in which every player is responsible for his team and he doesn't seem to understand or care. He just goes about his business without any fear of reprisal from management or his teammates and that's not right. When I played, there was no way I could have gotten away with this type of behavior, and neither could anyone else on the team.
John Kruk has mounted his horse, and he is going to ride it all the way to Indignationville! Because Manny Ramirez is not being a professional, and John Kruk has some words for him, by gum! This would have never stood in John Kruk's day. For example, John Kruk played on the 1993 Phillies. If Manny Ramirez tried any of this nonsense on the 1993 Phillies, someone would have held his feet to the fire. If Manny tried this B.S. on the 1993 Phillies, Lenny Dykstra would have taken the hypodermic needle out of his ass and marched right over to Manny and said, "Hey! Be a professional!" Dykstra's words might have carried some respect, since -- totally coincidentally -- he was in the midst of a year where he set statistically improbable personal highs in every major offensive category. (He was working really hard in the weight room, I guess.) Also, Dykstra's words may have carried respect because his sheer physical size had exploded so much in so short a time that one of the Phillies announcers took to calling him "Lenny Kruk" when he came to the plate.
But if Dykstra had approached Manny, things might have gotten heated. So heated, that maybe Jeff Scott, the convicted felon who, in a sworn affidavit, said that he "hug out with about half" of the 1993 Phillies, providing them with drugs, would have had to come over and break things up. Maybe Kruk could have pulled Dykstra aside and given him a cigarette, since the two of them used to smoke cigarettes on the bench -- in full view of the fans -- during games. Or maybe they could have just done a line of coke, as dozens of whispered reports suggested they did all the time.
Or maybe Pete Incaviglia, who hit 11 HR in 1991 and 1992, but who hit a mysterious 24 in 1993, would have stepped in and restored some professionalism to the clubhouse. Or Danny Jackson, the pitcher (pitcher!) who was nicknamed "The Incredible Hulk" because of how muscular he was, could have knocked some professionalism into Manny. If not, surely Dutch Daulton, who had 105 RBI in 1993 but never played in more than 98 games in any subsequent season due to a series of injuries (he was only 31 in 1993; maybe the injuries were the result of eating too many Froot Loops?), and who was beloved for what amounted to erratic and bizarre behavior, would have gone up to Manny and said, "Settle down. Act properly."
Or, wait -- I know what would have happened if Manny had acted unprofessionally in John Kruk's era. Lenny Dykstra's best friend, who allegedly helped him bet on baseball games, including those of the self-same 1993 Phillies, could have talked some sense into Manny over the phone, after taking Dykstra's wager on that afternoon's Twins-Brewers game. That would have worked. Maybe Dykstra, the notorious high-stakes gambler, who was linked to a gambling probe in Mississippi in 1991, could have helped matters by telling Manny that he, Dykstra, would bet heavily on Ramirez for the rest of the year in order to give Manny an incentive to play. And Kruk could have backed him up. After all, Kruk probably felt like he owed Dykstra some support, since a few months after Dykstra was linked to gambling on baseball, Dykstra broke his collarbone in a car wreck after John Kruk's bachelor party and missed several months of the season.
So, go get 'em, Krukie! Don't let these modern-day weirdos sully the reputation of your straight-arrow, play-the-right-way 1993 Phillies. You guys were the model for baseball player behavior. Is it possible that all of this is simply conjecture? That everyone on your team, more or less, had statistically improbably great years? That no one on the Phillies was using steroids or gambling on baseball or doing drugs or anything? Absolutely. And I will bet everything I own in the world that some of you were doing some combination of using steroids and drugs and gambling on baseball.
Think I'm being unfair? Think it's wrong to bring all this stuff up when you are accusing Manny of a different crime? Well, you did say, and I quote, "this is supposed to be a team game in which every player is responsible for his team. He just goes about his business without any fear of reprisal from management or his teammates and that's not right." So, way to call out your guys for everything they did back in the day. Let's see how you did that: (from cantstopthebleeding.com)
“Let me tell you, we partied hard on that team."
But what about Jeff Scott?
“I never heard of the guy, never saw anybody like that,” Kruk said.
Does Habeeb’s claim [that Scott "hug out with half the team"] bother Kruk?
“Not at all,” the former first baseman said. “If you listened to everything people said about us, you’d think we were all alcoholics, drug addicts and steroid users. I wish we had that much fun.”
Didn't you just talk about how hard you partied?
“One year [Dykstra] weighed next to nothing and the next he was all bulked up,” Kruk said. “I heard reporters wondering what he was on, so I asked him. I said, ‘What did you do?’ He said, ‘I just worked hard.’ I believed him. I had no reason not to believe him. He’d never lied to me before, and I knew he was big into weight lifting.
“You know, so many guys were getting big at that time from weights. When I first came in the league, I thought Jack Clark and Steve Garvey were big. Then all of sudden it seemed like everyone was that big. To me, Lenny was no different.”
Good work, Krukie. You're a goddamn hero. And for the record, you dunderhead, several of Manny's teammates, including Curt Schilling, David Wells, and Tim Wakefield, publicly or privately called Manny on his behavior. And as for management, well, they tried to get rid of him. So really, when you think about it, what the fuck are you complaining about?
