Howard’s Peculiar Statistics May Determine Race

Over the 13 games from August 26 through the start of last night’s game, a crucial span during which his team played its top rivals five times and stayed alive in the pennant race by clawing its way to a 7-6 record, Philadelphia first baseman Ryan Howard proved a brutal disappointment.The problem wasn’t anything he did; in fact, his massive .353 AVG/.431 OBA/.824 SLG batting line did as much as anything else to keep his Phillies close to the first-place Mets. The problem was what he didn’t do, which was strike out at obscene and unprecedented levels. Having struck out in 30% of his plate appearances through August 25, he only struck out in 24% of them over the next two weeks. That leaves him on pace for a record 209, which would shatter the record he set last year and make him the first man to break the mythic 200 barrier, but I can’t help but shake the feeling that this run of strong hitting has robbed us of what could have been, such as a run at 225.Not only has Howard’s late awakening kept his team within distance of the Mets and kept his strikeout totals lower than they could be, it’s also done a lot to keep him out of the history books in another way. Until recently, Howard was on pace to have the single worst season of any 40-home run man ever. However well he finishes out, he’ll end up among the worst. History, though, will likely elude him.It’s near impossible to have a really bad season while hitting 40 bombs, and the records bear this out. In 2000, Tony Batista, a wonderful player who actually faced the mound while in the batter’s box, hit 41 home runs with a .263/.307/.519 line. Per Baseball-Reference.com, once adjusted for park effects that line was 2% better than average, which isn’t really all that bad. Before his recent hot streak, Howard’s adjusted line was actually below average, but he’s now sitting at .239/.327/.507, 11% better than average. Batista’s achievement is safe.Nor does Howard pose any remaining threat to another dubious mark, the worst season among 130-RBI men. (He’s on pace for 138.) Moose Solters of the 1936 St. Louis Browns managed to drive in 134 with a batting line 6% worse than average, due mostly to the efforts of teammate Harlond Clift, who was for a time something like the David Wright of his day and scored 145 runs that year for a truly appalling team. (Along with Solters, both Zeke Bonura and Irish Meusel rate near the top of this list — clearly having a ridiculous baseball name is, as playing for the Colorado Rockies in the pre-humidor days, a clear benefit to anyone looking to drive in lots of runs without hitting very well.)Though these achievements are off the table, Howard’s season will still bear close scrutiny over the next weeks, and not just because of the threat he poses to the Mets when hitting well. Howard may have gaudy power numbers, but his status as an elite player is very much in doubt, and how he does through the end of the month will give us valuable information.The Howard question, as it were, is whether he’s hitting in bad luck or not. As much as he’s striking out, he’s not doing so more than he usually does, nor is he hitting more line drives or ground balls or fly balls, and mechanically, he seems fine to the untrained but appraising eye. The problems are that he’s walking just 11.5% of the time, far down from recent marks hovering around 16%, and that his average on balls in play is way down, from the .330-.360 range to, so far this year, .283.Were Howard a pitcher, you might expect this last number to go up this year just as a matter of chance. When a hitter, though, and especially one of his enormous dimensions, sees this kind of drop, it isn’t necessarily because he’s hitting too many at-em balls. A Howard who strikes out a third of the time and hits .280 when he gets the bat in the ball is a moderately useful player, but he isn’t anything to quiver and shake over, no matter how many home runs and RBI show up on the back of his Topps cards.So, it matters whether we see the ball-crushing monster and former MVP of the last few weeks or the Batista/Solters clone of the previous five months down the stretch. It won’t be conclusive, but the former would tend to make one think he was in a mere funk for a while, but more of the latter would make you think something else. Either way, it’s a shame about those strikeouts, but we can still cheer as the big man reaches for that 200th that neither he nor Adam Dunn nor anyone else have ever yet managed to hit.tmarchman@nysun.com

Howard’s Peculiar Statistics May Determine Race

Howard’s Peculiar Statistics May Determine Race

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