Archive for Ryan Howard

While we have discussed here how solid or awful performance very early in the season can “make or break” the reputation of a player for that given season, so too can similar performance at the end of the season. Most don’t remember that Carlos Delgado stunk early on, but since they cannot remember exactly when he started performing well, feel it has been for a very long time, maybe all year. A player in a somewhat similar situation is Ryan Howard. Howard, the Phillies first baseman and former NL MVP, got off to an extremely slow start, but has been so good recently that he is now creeping his way into award discussions.

Over the last 30 days, Howard is second in baseball with a 1.41 WPA/LI, leads baseball with both 11 home runs and 29 RBI, and has added 10 doubles as well. While RBIs are not the greatest evaluative tool, they are gospel to the mainstream, and he is not disappointing in that area. In this span, he has hit .291/.381/.709, a 1.090 OPS.

His overall WPA/LI is just 2.08, meaning that prior to this recent 30-day stretch, Howard had gone the whole season being no more than 2/3 of a win better than an average hitter. Sure, he has 44 HR and 133 RBI, and seems to be on a streak hot enough of helping him reach 48-50 longballs, but his numbers have taken serious hits. In 2006, he posted a .425 OBP/.659 SLG. Last year, a .392 OBP/.584 SLG. This year, however, even with the home run and doubles and RBIs, his slash line included a .332 OBP/.526 SLG. His batting average over the last three years has gone from .313 to .268 to its current .244.

Since his extra-base hits appear to be the same, it seems that Howard is just plain hitting less. His BABIP helps explain that, as it ranged from .336-.363 in 2005-07, and is just .283 today. Add to that his dearth of walks this year—108 in 2006, 107 in 2007, just 74 in 2008—and it’s no wonder why his slash line has plummeted. On the season, his .858 OPS is not terrible, but many would claim his numbers are much better based on how great he looks right now, “when it matters.” This same group likely would not believe that teammate Jayson Werth, with an .881 OPS, has a higher count in the same metric.

As an analyst, it’s important to remember that Howard’s dominance in the month of September so far does not come close to telling the whole story. As a fan, however, it is very exciting for this guy to finally start performing like everyone in the Philadelphia area has wanted him to for months. If the Phillies make the playoffs this year, he is definitely going to receive MVP votes, as unjustified as it may be, but that’s how it seems to go. Perform tremendous early on and stay the course for the rest and your reputation will remain in tact or perform tremendous at season’s end and it’s all anyone will remember.

Following last night’s absolutely insane game between the Phillies and Mets, Ryan Howard staked claim atop the NL leaderboard with his 35th home run of the season. With a little over a month to go in the season it seems perfectly reasonable, especially given his projection, to expect six or seven more dingers, which would put him over 40 for the third straight year. This year isn’t like 2006 or 2007 for Howard, however, as once you get past the home run and RBI totals, he isn’t having anywhere near a good or great season.

In 2006, his MVP campaign, he hit .313/.425/.659. Last year, .268/.392/.584. Sure, last year was a downgrade but he still posted an OPS around the 1.000 mark and showed the ability not just to hit for power but also to work a count and get on base. This year, that slash line has plummeted to .227/.317/.477, “good” for a .794 OPS.

No, batting average does not tell the whole story, especially in the case of power hitters—the value of their hits accounts for much more than singles—but this isn’t a situation like Adam Dunn’s, where a poor BA is masking a great OBP and SLG. All three components of Howard’s slash line are at very reduced rates. There are a few major reasons for this dropoff.

His BABIP has gone from .336 to .269 since last year. His BB-rate has dropped from 16.8% to 11.4%. And lastly, he strikes out all the time and has hit balls on the ground at an alarming rate this year (43.5% compared to 31.5% last year). You might think he has actually reduced his strikeout rate, as it went from 37% to 34%, but this isn’t exactly true. Because he has walked so much less this year, he has more official at-bats, and the punchouts cover a lesser percentage of these at-bats. Just looking at a straight up K/PA, the numbers come in around 30% for both this and last year.

Howard’s current OPS is .794. Players with marks better than his: Jason Kubel, Skip Schumaker, teammate Shane Victorino, and Stephen Drew.

His WPA/LI is 0.58. Players with marks better than his: Reed Johnson, teammate Jimmy Rollins, Ray Durham, and Ramon Santiago.

There is no way you really thought Howard would find himself alongside Jason Kubel and Ramon Santiago in any leaderboard this year. In the comments section of a recent post, someone mentioned that Howard might be having the worst 40-HR season in history. I decided to check if there have been any instances in history where a player hit 40+ home runs but failed to break the .800 OPS plateau.

The answer? No. Nobody has ever hit 40+ home runs with a sub-.800 OPS. Since offense wasn’t as prevalent in some periods back in the day I adjusted this to check for OPS+. Howard’s is barely over 100 right now, so I wanted to see if anyone has ever hit 40+ home runs with an OPS+ lower than 110. The only season I got belonged to Tony Batista, in 2000. Essentially, if Howard continues to mash dingers but fail to do anything else productive, this will be the worst 40-HR season in history, as I find it highly unlikely any other 40-HR club member ever found himself alongside the likes of Ramon Santiago or Jason Kubel in offensive categories.

Around this time of year those who write or analyze, be it in the mainstream media or the blogosphere, tend to get involved in posts discussing end of season award-winners. Heck, even Dave and I joined the fray yesterday in discussing the AL Cy Young Award with regards to Roy Halladay and Cliff Lee. In the comments sections of both of our articles, the conversation surrounding who will win the award vs. who should win the award began to surface. Conversations like this seem to sprout up all over the place so I figured a post was in order to attempt to figure out why they exist and where they come from.

For starters, the idea of someone who should win something vs. someone who will win the same thing implies that the eventual winner is not deserving of whatever it is he is winning. In our case, an award like the MVP or Cy Young. Those in the camp of the former are seceding that their guy is not going to win the award but that he should. And, when they say he should, it really means that if they were voting, the results would be much different.

This then implies those voting are wrong in their decisions.

Some of the time they are, but really, do those voting on the awards get it wrong all the time? And who is deciding the criteria with which to gauge their decisions? These awards are voted on by mainstream writers, ones who generally are not well-versed in much other than batting average or win-loss record. Most of the time, us in the sabermetrics community mock their lack of statistical prowess but, for me at least, I don’t truly get bothered unless the author blatantly misuses or quotes numbers out of context.

Saying, for instance, that Adam Dunn lacks value because he has a .230 BA annoys me because the writers are making a definitive claim about his worth while using a metric that does tell us something, but nowhere near enough to make such a claim. On the other hand, if someone says that Player X could win the MVP award because he made the most impact on a good team and has a lot of home runs, RBIs as well as a high batting average, I really do not get that bothered. Sure, I know that there are plenty of other, better metrics out there to truly measure worth, but I don’t really care much about the awards. It isn’t going to effect me if someone “undeserving” wins.

See, for us who analyze stats and base judgments on a series of metrics, awards just aren’t that meaningful other than for posts discussing, for instance, why David Wright or Matt Holliday was more deserving than Jimmy Rollins… or why Johan Santana should have won instead of Bartolo Colon in 2005. Do I wish those making these decisions were a bit more educated with regards to evaluating players? Of course… but I’m not going to let it ruin my day that they vote for the wrong person, unless of course the losing player had planned on splitting his award bonus with me.

I guess my point here is that those of us who understand how to evaluate a player better shouldn’t care so much about the awards and should leave it to the people who care more about impact on the game from what they see rather than what some numbers may suggest. As in, why get involved in something or get bothered by something we should care about very little, if at all? Leave the WPA/LI, VORP, BRAA, and UZR to us analysts to do our jobs and properly gauge the true talent levels of players, but let’s not bring them into MVP or Cy Young discussions when we know that the percentage of voters who utilize and understand these metrics is likely much lower than Adam Dunn’s percentage of hits/at-bats.

Dave showed us the other day a group of pitchers due to regress over the remainder of the season based on some quite unsustainable numbers. Here we are going to look at what should be expected of some hitters, projected to have good to great years, that struggled prior to the all star game festivities. As you saw last night I called upon the in-season Marcel to evaluate what Edgar Renteria’s second half and updated seasonal line would look like, and that same projection spreadsheet will be called upon right now.

The reason is that the pre-season projections are based on actual data representing the true talent level of a player. So, if someone expected to OPS .900 only posted a .700 in the first half, it does not mean he will continue to be in the .700 range all season. Based on what we know about the player we would expect him to have a better second half; however, his projection for this season would be updated to an OPS lower than the .900 thought to be accurate before the season.

I looked at the projections entering this season and found ten guys thought to be capable of posting an OPS higher than .820, who posted counts at least 70 points worse in the first half. The numbers below will follow the format: projected OPS, actual OPS to date, difference. There may be more than the following players fitting the aforementioned criteria but, for now, I decided to profile these ten:

Miguel Cabrera: .966, .837, -.129
Ryan Howard: .965, .832, -.133
Paul Konerko: .862, .687, -.175
Robinson Cano: .844, .643, -.201
Ryan Zimmerman: .826, .718, -.108
Ryan Garko: .826, .668, -.158
Todd Helton: .889, .783, -.106
Derek Jeter: .830, .740, -.090
Alexis Rios: .823, .737, -.086
Nick Swisher: .826, .754, -.072

By virtue of having high expectations and falling well short, these ten players are all expected to have better to much better second halves of the season. Here is their projected second-half OPS, followed by their updated seasonal count:

Miguel Cabrera: .936, .879
Ryan Howard: .932, .873
Paul Konerko: .825, .757
Robinson Cano: .797, .708
Ryan Zimmerman: .810, .771
Ryan Garko: .776, .716
Todd Helton: .854, .816
Derek Jeter: .804, .766
Alexis Rios: .798, .764
Nick Swisher: .808, .777

Of these ten players, the only one whose updated seasonal OPS would come within 50 points of his pre-season projection is Nick Swisher; his OPS was projected to be .826 and is updated to .777. Cano, Garko, and Konerko (is Konerko what you get if you combine the names Cano and Garko?) are all updated to have an OPS over 100 points lower than they were prior to the season. Cabrera, Howard, and Helton should all have very good second halves and they are the only three on this list whose updated seasonal OPS would clock in at over .800. All ten of these players should perform better than they did in the first half but they are also very likely to finish the season worse than we thought they would.

For most of the season all eyes directed towards the Phillies offense have been focused on Chase Utley. And why not? After all, Chase can be found in the top five or top ten in just about every offensive category in the National League. Recently, though, Utley has hit a coldspell, posting a .203/.294/.356 slash line in his last sixteen games. Luckily for the Phillies, others have stepped up and filled the void.

My brother, who covers the Phillies at Phanatic Phollow Up, wrote yesterday about how not just one but many Phillies hitters are stepping up at this juncture. In his first 19 games, Shane Victorino had a .626 OPS; in his last 19 games it has been .773, raising his season OPS to .703. Geoff Jenkins had a .237/.284/.329 slash line through 24 games; in his last 21 it has been .339/.358/.468. Even Pedro Feliz is at a .304/.333/.478 clip over his last 12 games.

Of all the players stepping up, none is more satisfying to Phillies fans than Ryan Howard. Since May 7th, Howard has played 18 games, with a .264/.321/.681 slash line, 4 2B, 1 3B, 8 HR and 18 RBI. On the season he has 14 HR, coming in just behind Lance Berkman, Dan Uggla, and teammate Utley. Howard is still striking out, 28 K in these 18 games, but the extra base hits, about half of which have been to the opposite field, are definitely a promising sign.

He puts about one-third of his flyballs into the stands and hits a lot of balls hard, as evidenced by his ~20% line drives. Despite lacking anything resembling speed, Howard has had very high BABIPs for his career; .375 in 2004, .358 in 2005, .363 in 2006, .336 in 2007. This year, however, it is only .245. This should regress to his mean as the season progresses meaning Howard could, and probably will, defy his critics by having what ends up as a good season.

The strikeouts are definitely a problem but, unlike in April, when he was just striking out, now he is striking out and hitting the ball hard, often out of the stadium.