Phillies: Will we remember Ryan Howard as we should?

It appears as though Ryan Howard, the 6’ 4” homer-bashing first baseman for the Phillies from 2004-2016 may well be done with his playing days. How we look back at his playing days may say more about us than it does about Howard, however.

The 37-year-old had his minor-league contract with the Atlanta Braves terminated on Tuesday and given that he hit .196 in 362 plate appearances last year for the Phillies, it’s fair to say he may have to settle for transitioning to a post-playing career. Given how charming Howard has proven to be throughout his time in the MLB spotlight, as well as his proclivity for being on TV, it would not at all be surprising to see Howard pop up on MLB Network or ESPN before too long.

If Howard is indeed able to slip right into a career in punditry, there’s a good chance that’s what he will be remembered for in 25 or 30 years. Think about Tim McCarver. He played 21 seasons in baseball, made two All-Star Games and finished second in the MVP vote in 1967, but if you were to poll 100 baseball fans, it is likely that well over 50 percent would think of McCarver as an announcer first and foremost.

However, this is not my fear for Howard. If Howard is remembered as an engaging ex-player spending his post-playing days in the sports media landscape, that will be an excellent result. My worry is how Howard’s legacy will age in terms of his statistics.

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For the first half of baseball history, Ty Cobb was considered the greatest player of all time. His status as the all-time leader in career batting average and hits cemented his legacy as the true G.O.A.T. for the entire sport. This sentiment was shared up until around the late 1950s and early 1960s when a sea change began to overtake the overriding narrative regarding “best player in MLB history,” and Babe Ruth began to be considered the G.O.A.T.

The timing might seem strange considering Ruth had been retired for two decades. So what happened? There are a few theories.

One theory says that all of those young boys and girls who Ruth spent hours upon hours signing autographs for were now taking jobs as sports journalists and, as such, were flooding the pages of Sport and other reputable outlets with praise for Ruth and his potential status as the greatest of all time. These writers felt their hero wasn’t getting enough credit in the vast baseball historical landscape and wanted to make sure his legacy was embronzed for future generations.

Another theory says the name to know is Al Stump. Stump was the ghostwriter for Cobb’s autobiography and a man whose name is now synonymous with sleazeball. Stump waited until after Cobb passed away to publish his hatchet job of Cobb, an exaggerated, poorly-researched and quite possibly libelous account of Cobb (again, supposedly from Cobb’s perspective as an autobiography) which included a quote about Cobb killing a man in Detroit, as well as sections about his now-infamous spike-sharpening (which never actually happened) and mistreatment of hospital staff from later in his life.

It acted to paint Cobb as the villain of baseball that many think of him as today. In reality, Cobb was no saint, but his troubled story actually leans toward redemption as he was a man who showed real growth as a human – especially in the field of race relations – as he got older. However, the damage was done by Stump, and many baseball fans jumped ship on thinking this “racist murderer” was the G.O.A.T.

One theory that I think goes under the radar in the Ruth-over-Cobb change in opinion is how fans interacted with the sport of baseball. Any baseball fan worth her/his salt knows, 1961 is a famous season. It was the season where Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle had their famous battle for the single-season home run all-time record. Maris ended the season with 61, breaking Babe Ruth’s seemingly-unbreakable record of 60 homers in 1927. The long ball was once again king. As such, it makes perfect sense that Ruth (the all-time home run king at the time) was beginning to get more shine than Cobb (a man who hit just 117 homers in his career).

When fans look back at baseball history they often do so from a modern lens. It’s hard not to. The fans of the 1960s were all about home runs, so naturally Ruth (714) was greater than Cobb (117). The fact that in Cobb’s day home runs were simply not thought of as that great, and that getting on base (via hits) was considered of the utmost importance didn’t matter to fans of the 1960s. They saw Ruth and Cobb through their modern lens.

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So what did that long section on Ruth and Cobb in the middle of a what was supposedly a Ryan Howard article have to do with anything?

I’m worried about Howard’s legacy in the future.

Howard is a player who, when he was in his prime, was as devastating a hitter as you could find. He burst on the scene in 2005 as a rookie, hitting 22 homers in just 88 games and winning the Rookie of the Year Award. The very next season he made a push for the magical 60-home run plateau, falling just short, but still finishing with 58 home runs. Oh, and he knocked in 149 runs and won an MVP.

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It’s not often we talk about a player’s production in terms of home runs and RBI when looking at players through the modern lens. We talk about WAR. We talk about positional adjustments. We talk about OPS+ and ballpark adjustments. We don’t even weigh winning an MVP award as highly as we once did. Just look at Mike Trout. We all know he was the best player in baseball each of the past five seasons even though he holds “only” two MVP awards.

That’s fine for the most part. I’m as big a fan of WAR and positional adjustments and the value of defense and all that jazz as anybody. If I had a vote in the 2013 MVP race, I would have selected Mike Trout over Miguel Cabrera. I worship at the altar of Ben Zobrist and Bobby Grich. I get it.

All that said, Ryan Howard was a far better player than he will be remembered through the modern lens. This is a player who was worth less than 15 wins for his entire career, according to Baseball-Reference. That’s a season and a half for Mike Trout, and it is simply wrong.

Just look at 2007. Howard hit 47 home runs and got on base at a .392 clip (2.9 bWAR), and yet he was somehow worth less than 135 games of Jack Wilson on the last-place Pittsburgh Pirates (3.7 bWAR). Or how about the next season? Howard hit 48 homers, drove in 146 runs and his team won a freakin’ World Series, the first title for the city of Philadelphia in over 25 years (1.8 bWAR). But yeah, those 81 games Elijah Dukes contributed to the 59-win Washington Nationals were definitely better (2.3 bWAR).

Howard gets slaughtered late in his career by WAR, netting -4.5 bWAR over his last five seasons, and that’s probably fair. He was never a great defender, and his offense slipped to a level where he was likely only in the starting lineup because of his large contract.

Still, this was a man who was a feared hitter on a fun mini-dynasty from the late 2000s. We’re all able to remember that now, but what happens when some young boy or girl opens up Baseball-Reference in 2043 and, without knowing better, assumes that Howard (14.8 bWAR) had about half the career value of Kerry Wood (27.9 bWAR)? Or for a less modern – but more ridiculous – comparison, that Howard was worth less to baseball history than late-1800s pitcher Jouett Meekin (29.2 bWAR)?

Now hopefully these young baseball scholars of the 2040s will complement their baseball research with articles on the players and be able to see Howard’s true impact, but with the way baseball is trending, statistics are likely to only become more and more prevalent in player evaluation.

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For the most part, that’s great. I’m just worried that a player like Ryan Howard, who truly stood among the game’s elite and has a place in the hearts of every baseball fan of the last 15 years, won’t be remembered quite as fondly as he should be.

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