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Let's end the Ryan Howard witch hunt now
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Let's end the Ryan Howard witch hunt now
While the image of The Big Piece (no relation) watching strike three — and the Phillies 2010 season — cross the plate will be the bitter, indelible image most of Phightins Nation carries with them from this star-crossed season, it shouldn't be.
Dave Cameron over at Fan Graphs — the best baseball analysis site going these days — has an excellent post up today addressing what I've been engaging in way too many Facebook and Twitter arguments about: "The Phillies lost in spite of Ryan Howard's performance, not becauseof it."
âHere's Ryan Howard, who does not yet have an RBI in the series.â
You could count on one hand the number of times the Fox crew said his name and failed to mention his series RBI total. So, when Howard took strike three on a nasty slider from Brian Wilson in the ninth inning, the narrative was confirmed, and Ryan Howard has now become the reason the Phillies lost the series.
There's only one problem â besides Jayson Werth, he was the only guy who did anything offensively against the Giants.
...
Howard led the team in batting average, on base percentage, and extra base hits in the NLCS. And yet, because he didn't knock in a run, Fox decided that he was struggling at the plate. Usage of the statistic like this is why the sabermetric community has spent so much time working to explain its faults â if it was put in context, it's not the worst proxy for offensive prowess, but too often it is used to tell a story that is simply not true.
Essentially, contrary to popular opinion, Howard — although he did have a few high-profile whiffs with runners on (but tell me who on the team didn't) — was actually one of just two Phillies (along with Jayson Werth) to show up at the plate. Howard's gaudy .318/.400/.500 line (7 for 22 with 3 walks and 4 doubles) suggest that Howard was far from a zero. That no RsBI thing everyone keeps bringing up is, yes, a function of him not coming through in the clutch, but also a function of his teammates not being on base all that much ahead of him.
It will be popular to pin this season's shortcomings on The Big Man — a bull's-eye comes with the big contract — but it will also be wrong.
There are a lot of guys in that clubhouse who should be taking a hard look in the mirror:
- Shane Victorino for choking with the bases loaded and ahead in the count against a rookie.
- Ben Francisco for, with a runner on third and one out, swinging from his heels when just putting the ball in play probably plates a run.
- Charlie Manuel for not recognizing the depressed run environment of the series and thus not having his players prepared for the situational hitting that could have eked out an extra run here or there.
- Sam Perlozzo for not sending Rollins home on Ryan Howard's Game 6 double.
- Chase Utley for some of the sloppiest fielding we've seen from him in some time.
- Jimmy Rollins and the entire coaching staff for not recognizing that a lefty pitcher intentionally walking a righty with a runner on third would be as big a gimme steal of home as you could ask for.
- Charlie Manuel for trusting Jose Contreras to pitch the seventh inning only sometimes.
- and so on.
There's a lot of blame to go around — and some of it should go to Howard — but definitely not all of it, and nowhere near what the growing consensus seems to be heaping on.
You are so right! To win a world series the stars have to align for you and they did not do so for the Phillies this year. Anything that could have gone our way didn't! Clearly, the inconsistent offensive production must be addressed in the offseason. But in the mean time, everybody get off Ryan's back!
Amen to that!
Could not agree more. Let's talk more about the mistakes of our fans. 1 assuming a win against a two time Cy young winner, a no hitter pitcher, two young up and coming pitchers and a great bull pen. 2 thinking that you will get to the series every year.
First it's a Ryan Howard witch hunt, next thing you know it's a *Brian* Howard witch hunt. That's why I'm against witch hunts.
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