Brookover: Howard and Phillies are kidding themselves
Ryan Howard and the Phillies are having a disagreement about the present and it appears to be because they are both a little delusional about the future.
Ryan Howard and the Phillies are having a disagreement about the present and it appears to be because they are both a little delusional about the future.
A day after Pete Mackanin said he planned to give rookie Tommy Joseph a longer look at first base during the season's final full month, Howard said he neither understood nor agreed with the manager's decision.
"I don't necessarily think it's right or fair considering this is my last month here, but it is interesting," Howard told the Inquirer on Wednesday.
Howard did not hide his motive for wanting more playing time in September, and he has a legitimate complaint based on his body of work in August. If he wanted to, Howard could take the $10 million buyout the Phillies will pay him to go away after this season and walk proudly into the sunset. Say what you will about the $125 million he will have been paid over the course of his soon-to-be-completed five-year contract; it does not change the fact that he is the second most prolific power hitter in the franchise's history.
Without the Big Piece there is no second Phillies World Series title.
Howard, however, does not want to walk away after this season. He will be 37 in November, but he still thinks he can play and he will no doubt point to his productive August as a reason why. Back that up with a strong September and maybe, just maybe, some American League team looking for a designated hitter this offseason will offer Howard a minor-league deal laced with performance-based incentives.
The only way for Howard to do that would be to get playing time comparable to what he received in August. His 14 starts last month marked the first time in the last three months that he got more playing time than Joseph, and he played considerably better than the rookie.
Still, it is a long shot that Howard's career is going to continue beyond 2016 and that is what he does not seem to understand. Perhaps it would help if he had a conversation with Jimmy Rollins, who had to learn the hard way that his time was up when the Chicago White Sox released him in June.
Perhaps Howard's optimism is born out of the fact that the top seven designated hitters in the American League this season have a combined average age of 36.4, including 40-year-old super freak David Ortiz.
The difference between those guys and Howard is that they can still play every day. Howard is not just limited by his inability to play in the field, he has also been reduced to facing only righthanded pitching. The last two seasons should have been a clear indication to Howard that his career is finished. If some other team wanted him, he would have been gone from Philadelphia by now.
You could argue that his inevitable departure from the Phillies is the exact reason Joseph should be in the starting lineup every day until the season's final weekend at home against the New York Mets, when Howard will surely be given the opportunity to take a long final bow.
But that's where the Phillies' delusion comes into play. A wise, old baseball man told me long ago that you should be careful about what you see in spring training and September. This weekend's series against the Atlanta Braves is a perfect example. So what if Joseph gets two hits and a home run off Joel De La Cruz on Friday night or whoever the Braves decide to pitch on Saturday? That does not help them determine if he can hit against the elite class of pitchers he will face in the coming years against Washington and the Mets. It does not help determine if he'll be able to hit in the pressure of a playoff race.
Truth be told, Joseph has not really shown much more than Darin Ruf did a year ago despite getting more of a chance to do so. He has provided bursts of power, but that is not all that rare among big-league first basemen these days. His .292 on-base percentage is 26th among the 32 first basemen with at least 250 at-bats and his .785 OPS is tied for 18th.
Yes, Joseph, 25, is five years younger than Ruf and it's possible he improves in the coming years. But if the Phillies wanted to find out more about Joseph and Ruf, for that matter, they should have released Howard before this season ever started.
Instead, they chose to keep him around and give him the majority of playing time in April, May and August. Those first two months did not go well for Howard, but the third one did and he'd like a chance to prove it was not a fluke in September.
Something like this was bound to happen once the Phillies decided to keep Howard around for the entire 2016 season.
@brookob