The Resurgence of Ryan Howard

This off-season, Ryan Howard was rewarded for his first 2 seasons in the Majors with a record-breaking arbitration award of $10 million for the 2008 season. While he may or may not be worth that much money, that decision put a huge target on Howard's back. Much like ARODs record-breaking deals have done to him, Howard now had to prove that a bloated contract was legitimate and I feel that this put a perhaps unfair amount of pressure on him and it also created an unfair amount of expectations from the Philadelphia fans.
Howard started off very strong in Spring Training and he appeared to be poised to have a career season much like his 2006 effort where he came home with the MVP trophy. However, on Opening Day everything fell apart. By the end of April, Howard was batting a brisk .172 and he was on pace to shatter his own single-season strikeout mark. Things hit a low point for Howard on May 7th when, after a 0-4 performance on the night and 1-20 performance on the week, he average stood at a grisly .163. That night, fed up with his pitiful start to the season, I decided to start tracking Howard's pursuit of history in shattering the Single-Season strikeout record. I created and displayed a "K-Watch" on this blog for all to see his pathetic efforts on the year. Also, since that day, in an ironic twist Howard began to start hitting. Slowly at first and more rapidly of late, Howard has gotten good contact on pitches and he has started going the opposite way to avoid the Shift defense arrayed for him. In the 14 games since that dark morning of the .163 average, Howard has posted an impressive line:

.304 AVG, .361 OBP, 15 R, 15 RBI, 3 2B, 1 3B, 7 HR.

While overall he hasn't been on fire, he is now hitting around his career norms which are impressive to begin with. The one negative for Howard is that he is still striking out a ton (21 Ks in 14 games). The bottom line that we will have to accept is that Howard is simply not a .300 hitter and he probably never will be. He strikes out far too much to hit for high average and his swing is far too prone to long slumps and shorter hot streaks.

Where Will He End Up?

The major questions now are will he keep up his resurgence and what will his end of season numbers look like? My guess is that he may not hit .300 the rest of the way but something like .280 is very possible. To be optimistic, lets say he hits .300 for the rest of the season. Even if that happens, he will end up with an average of .272 on the year (or about 10 points of his career batting average). At this point I would be ecstatic if Howard ends up batting in the .270s after his dreadful start. He will also more than like end up with over 40 HRs and 100 RBIs. Even with his horrible start he was on pace to hit both those marks so he honestly could be closer to 50 HRs and 120 RBIs and unfortunately 230 Ks.

Looking back at a season where he hits 40-50 HRs, knocks in 120 runs and hits around his career norms for average, Howard will likely say he had a good year and feel he should win arbitration again but should he really? Howard is no Albert Pujols and he never will be. Pujols is an elite hitter who hits for both high power and high average while playing Gold-Glove defense at 1B. Howard is a one-dimensional slugger who either smashes the ball or strikes out. There is no legitimate comparison no matter what Howard's agent will tell the Phillies Front Office. At age 29, Howard is looking for a long-term deal before it becomes clears that he is in a decline phase and the Phillies do not appear all that interested in locking up a player who's best years are likely already behind him. Now, I truly believe that if Howard were to take a respectable but not outrageous contract along the lines of the Chase Utley's deal, that they would already have a deal in place. However, Howard appears to want a record-setting contract that the Phillies will not and should not offer him. I will go out on a limb here and predict that Howard will not be in a Phillies uniform by the end of 2010 and that the Phillies will not come close to offering him what he feels he deserves. We should enjoy the ride while it lasts because the Phillies have a very brief window (2008-2010) where they have a core group of players like Howard that will allow them to compete for a World Series.