Don’t Blame Ryan Howard

by
October 25, 2010

Even before Ryan Howard struck out looking to end the NLCS on Saturday, he was already being fitted with goat horns, especially by broadcasters Joe Buck and Tim McCarver. If you watched any of the last few games of the series, you heard some version of the following phrase every time Howard stepped into the box:

“Here’s Ryan Howard, who does not yet have an RBI in the series.”

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 – besides Jayson Werth, he was the only guy who did anything offensively against the Giants. The Phillies lost in spite of Ryan Howard’s performance, not because of it. Here are the individual NLCS lines for each Philadelphia starter.

Shane Victorino: .208/.296/.250
Placido Polanco: .250/.360/.350
Chase Utley: .182/.333/.227
Ryan Howard: .318/.400/.500
Jayson Werth: .222/.375/.611
Jimmy Rollins: .261/.320/.304
Raul Ibanez: .211/.250/.263
Carlos Ruiz: .167/.318.333

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 – 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.

You Aren't a FanGraphs Member
It looks like you aren't yet a FanGraphs Member (or aren't logged in). We aren't mad, just disappointed.
We get it. You want to read this article. But before we let you get back to it, we'd like to point out a few of the good reasons why you should become a Member.
1. Ad Free viewing! We won't bug you with this ad, or any other.
2. Unlimited articles! Non-Members only get to read 10 free articles a month. Members never get cut off.
3. Dark mode and Classic mode!
4. Custom player page dashboards! Choose the player cards you want, in the order you want them.
5. One-click data exports! Export our projections and leaderboards for your personal projects.
6. Remove the photos on the home page! (Honestly, this doesn't sound so great to us, but some people wanted it, and we like to give our Members what they want.)
7. Even more Steamer projections! We have handedness, percentile, and context neutral projections available for Members only.
8. Get FanGraphs Walk-Off, a customized year end review! Find out exactly how you used FanGraphs this year, and how that compares to other Members. Don't be a victim of FOMO.
9. A weekly mailbag column, exclusively for Members.
10. Help support FanGraphs and our entire staff! Our Members provide us with critical resources to improve the site and deliver new features!
We hope you'll consider a Membership today, for yourself or as a gift! And we realize this has been an awfully long sales pitch, so we've also removed all the other ads in this article. We didn't want to overdo it.

The Phillies lost not because Ryan Howard didn’t hit when it mattered, but because all of his teammates except for one failed to bring the offense when the season was on the line. Howard had some noticeable failures, but on the whole, he did his job. In this case, RBIs are more deceptive than descriptive.





 

Dave is the Managing Editor of FanGraphs.

85 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Joe
15 years ago

Good stuff. I am pretty sure I saw him hit two doubles off of lefties during the series as well. It clearly wasn’t his fault they lost this series. Still, the contract is way more than he deserved.

0