Black Superman has become the Black Ken Phelps (except Phelps could get on base)


http://thatballsouttahere.com/2013/07/01/the-ryan-howard-platoon-has-begun/

The Ryan Howard Platoon Has Begun

Jul 1st, 2013 at 10:00 am by John Stolnis

It appears as though the platoon of Ryan Howard has begun. At least, to a degree.

On Friday night, Howard was given the night off against left-handed starter Chris Capuano. That’s nothing new. Howard has often been given the night off against a left-handed starter, especially if he had been struggling at the plate. He entered Friday night’s game 1 for his last 15 with 7 strikeouts.

Then he was benched again on Saturday night, this time against left starter Hyun-Jin Ryu. The Phillies said they wanted to give their $125 million slugger a couple nights off in a row to clear his head.

OK. Curious, but not particularly eye-catching.

However, the ultimate proof that Charlie Manuel may have decided to employ at least a moderate platoon with Howard came in the 8th inning of Saturday night’s game against the Dodgers.

With the bases loaded and two outs, Manuel brought Howard into the on-deck circle to pinch hit. Dodgers manager Don Mattingly countered by bringing in lefty reliever J.P. Howell to face him.

Manuel then pulled his clean-up hitter, the guy making $20 million this year and $25 million a year the next three years, back to the dugout and sent up the right-handed hitting Kevin Frandsen to face Howell.

http://oi40.tinypic.com/qovq7b.jpg

To this, we all say, bravo, Charlie.

Even though Frandsen grounded out to end the threat, Manuel finally did what so many people have been calling for. He pulled Howard against a tough lefty in a pressure situation for a right-handed hitter.

Ryan Howard is simply too much of an automatic out, especially when he’s slumping, against left-handed pitchers to be allowed to hit.
Our long national crusade may now be over.

The Phillies had a much better chance for success with Frandsen against a left-hander than Howard. Ryan is a career .224 hitter against left-handers, with an OPS .728 against them. Last year, he hit .173/.604 against lefties, and this year has hit .173/.516 against them.

Frandsen, meanwhile, has a career .284/.772 hitter against lefties in 296 plate appearances. Last year, Frandsen hit .400/.980 against lefties and this year is hitting .296/.980 against them.
This is a move Manuel should make almost every time.

The only time to leave Howard in against a lefty is when he’s in one of his patented hot streaks. And until just a few days ago, Howard had been scorching hot. From June 9 to June 22 (12 games) Howard hit .432/1.273 with 3 HRs in 52 PAs. In the past, Howard would go on two-month hot streaks like that.

No more.

http://oi40.tinypic.com/2untvur.jpg

For the season, Howard is now at .268/.321/.468 with an OPS of .789, 10 HRs and 41 RBIs. Those are Rico Brogna numbers. He has also struck out 89 times in 299 PAs (that’s 30%).

Howard is battling knee problems and is still recovering from an Achilles injury that apparently is going to sap him of power for the rest of his career. The Phillies and Howard might both be better served by letting him just have surgery on his knee, rest up his Achilles, and come back strong in 2014, hopefully the way David Ortiz did this year.

Unless that happens, Ryan Howard is a $125 million platoon player.
But let’s face it, pretty much EVERY team has one of those, right?
The Phillies have begun the full-on platoon of Ryan Howard this weekend in Los Angeles.

It’s about time.

http://wapc.mlb.com/play/?content_id=28474797&c_id=mlb

http://board.okayplayer.com/okp.php?az=show_topic&forum=21&topic_id=86039&mesg_id=86039

let's see how Kobe handles that issue.

Bobby Bonilla-45 million-dollar sweepstakes winner.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/health/sns-rt-us-nba-retire-achilles-tear-20130627,0,3664349.story


NBA players often retire after Achilles tear
By Kerry Grens
Reuters
11:30 a.m. CDT, June 27, 2013

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Many professional basketball players who rupture their Achilles tendon never make it back for another season, according to a new study.

Researchers also found those who suffer the heel injury and do come back tend to perform at a lower level than they did before getting hurt.

"If you follow the sport you can see it's a devastating injury to these players," said Dr. Douglas Cerynik, the senior author of the study from Drexel University College of Medicine in Philadelphia.

In April, an Achilles tendon rupture ended the season of Los Angeles Lakers star Kobe Bryant, who suffered the injury during a game against Golden State.

The tendon runs along the back of the ankle and heel. A tear often requires surgery to repair it, followed by rehabilitation.

To understand the extent of the impact of these injuries, Cerynik and his colleagues gathered information from press releases, reports of player injuries and player profiles.

They found that from 1988 to 2011, 18 National Basketball Association (NBA) players suffered a tendon rupture. Of those, seven athletes never returned to play another game.

The findings are not surprising, given the age of the injured players, said Dr. Brian Sennett, the chief of sports medicine at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, who was not involved in this study.

The average age of those who suffered a torn Achilles tendon was close to 30, while the average age of professional NBA players is 27.

"They're already starting to go on the downslide of their careers and they probably don't have a lot of longevity. So in those individuals, when they lose just a little bit (of edge), they sometimes think about retirement," Sennett told Reuters Health.

The overall performance of the 11 players who did return to basketball declined after their injury.

Cerynik's group used a metric called the "player efficiency rating," which takes into account stats such as an athlete's points, rebounds, assists and free throw attempts per game.

Following the injury, the eight players who returned for at least two seasons had an average efficiency rating of 11.69 - down more than four points from their pre-injury rating of 16.1.

In comparison, similarly rated basketball players of the same age - who did not suffer an Achilles injury - saw their efficiency rating decline by just over one point.

However, injured players seemed to do just as well as their non-injured counterparts when it came to rebounding, shooting and other activities that involve explosive jumping movements and the Achilles tendon.

That suggests overall performance is affected by an Achilles tear - not specifically the more physically demanding basketball skills, Cerynik and his colleagues wrote in their report in The American Journal of Sports Medicine.

Dr. Selene Parekh, an orthopedic surgeon at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, who didn't participate in the new research, said the findings are valuable for understanding the repercussions of these injuries.

The research is "very important because it's not just a matter of, are players able to return, but how well are they able to return, and that has a bearing on contract negotiations for players," he told Reuters Health.

Parekh said surgical treatments for torn tendons have improved dramatically in recent years, previously involving incisions close to five inches long and now requiring as little as a one-inch cut.

In the future, he said, operations might involve only pinholes, which could perhaps reduce patients' trauma and risk for complications.

Cerynik told Reuters Health it would be difficult to intervene and prevent the few Achilles tendon ruptures that happen in the NBA because these players are likely following proper weight and stretching regimens "as best as anyone can."

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/12iHrsx The American Journal of Sports Medicine, online June 3, 2013.

or what, but a lot of dudes have fallen off hard recently, Howard, Texiera, Pujols, A-Rod, Hamilton, Kemp...

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2009/writers/joe_posnanski/06/29/james.33/index.html

in about half of the ones he actually does play in.

He'll likely bounce back at some point I'm thinking.

Don't tell Dodger Fans this but he's really only had one great year in his career so far anyway.

and it's taken a lot of the power he generated.

He's also gonna be 34 years old by the end of this season because Thome's presence had him come up at least two seasons late.

Body-wise he's still as big as ever.

Don't be throwing him into the mix with those juiceheads, he's a St Louis product for Heaven's sake.

>and it's taken a lot of the power he generated.

I understand all of that...

>He's also gonna be 34 years old by the end of this season
>because Thome's presence had him come up at least two seasons
>late.

and definitely that part too

>Body-wise he's still as big as ever.
>
>Don't be throwing him into the mix with those juiceheads, he's
>a St Louis product for Heaven's sake.

I'm not throwing the big homie under the bus, but pretty much all baseball players are suspect to me at this point

>
>I'm not throwing the big homie under the bus, but pretty much
>all baseball players are suspect to me at this point

I just think with #6 there's been other issues that I'd put at the forefront.

my daughter is going to his alma mater in the fall. That's my dude. Hate to see him like this.

and he's gonna spend the rest of his days in Philly as a shell of himself with an unmovable contract on a shitty team, probably hearing his share of boos too.

Sucks.

Not trying to knock your point, but they're not.

you to avoid and/or play through injuries, if you've been on them for a while then all of a sudden stop, shit starts breaking down

Albert is battling knee and foot problems. I was watching him last night. He has a really wide, deep (pause) stance. He just can't power out of it anymore. It's depressing to me to watch.

in addition to the disappointment of him not playing well and having a ridiculous contract, can you imagine the whining these mf's would be doing around town. They would everything but call him a n***** and some of them would slip that in.

I'm happy with "Pujols-lite" Beltran, we have plenty of bats, we probably need to flip some for pitching although I'd hate to see any of our hitters go, somebody may have to move

i guess the cards offered him a 7 year deal, even that would have been a reach but only in hindsight.

have been true

i figured after he put that shitty start behind him last year, he would crank on for another 3-4 seasons at least.

bizarre.

i hate open market signings though. this is another reason. you've got no question the best hitter in baseball over a decade, and even he can't be banked on.

yesterday I was listening to a local sports show and had to turn the station. It was disgusting some of the shit people were texting in. Shit like they hoped he got beaned in the head or that he broke his ankle running to 1st base. It's amazing how quick these assholes have forgotten everything he did as a Cardinal. There are no WS rings in 06 and 11 without Albert...period. I know the David Freese heroics and whatnot, but they don't get there without Pujols. Shit, in 2006 he CARRIED them into the playoffs and to that WS. That said, his falloff is startling. Like you, I love Albert still. Everytime I think he's starting to look like himself again...he reverts back to what we see now. As far as the current Cards...I can totally see maybe Matt Adams being out. Maybe like Adams and a pitching prospect for a Cliff Lee and Michael Young (completely hypothetical, just saying). Also, I may be one of Pete Kozma's biggest fans, but dude is really struggling. Mo is gonna have to make some type of a move.

don't really have depth at so the job is his almost by default.

I haven't seen him play, but the reasoning is that Law thinks any offensive utility that Kozma provides is smoke and mirrors. But Jackson can draw walks and is, apparently, a good defender.

Shortstop is crazy thin everywhere. It's why the pretend prospect-for-prospect trade between the Cards and Rangers of Oscar Tavares for Jurickson Profar got so much discussion that one or the other GMs actually commented on whether they'd do it.

>I haven't seen him play, but the reasoning is that Law thinks
>any offensive utility that Kozma provides is smoke and
>mirrors. But Jackson can draw walks and is, apparently, a good
>defender.
>
>Shortstop is crazy thin everywhere. It's why the pretend
>prospect-for-prospect trade between the Cards and Rangers of
>Oscar Tavares for Jurickson Profar got so much discussion that
>one or the other GMs actually commented on whether they'd do
>it.

Interesting, I hadn't heard the Tavares for Profar talk, it will be interesting to see what the Rangers do with him seeing as how they just gave $120mil to Elvis Andrus who's currently batting eight right now, lol

I also heard Tavares for Andrus before Texas breaded him out, with the thought that maybe Profar would be their SS of the future. I love that now mufuckas see how important Furcal really was. A SS who contributed offensively and defensively.

>I also heard Tavares for Andrus before Texas breaded him out,
>with the thought that maybe Profar would be their SS of the
>future. I love that now mufuckas see how important Furcal
>really was. A SS who contributed offensively and defensively.

I heard Taveres for Andrus, I'm glad we DIDN'T do that, I've always felt like Andrus was a little overrated.

I was always a huge Furcal fan since he broke in with Braves.

Cardinals have the best system in baseball right now in both depth and upside, but it's lacking the one thing nearly everybody is lacking: quality shortstops. Rangers have a very good system that's long on pitchers and short on impact bats.

Prospect for prospect trades are so rare, but this idea kind of caught people's attention this winter and enough folks wrote articles about it that Mozeliak actually commented on the idea during an interview with Jim Bowden this spring. He apparently said he'd "have to think about it" if the offer came up.

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/jurickson-profar-for-oscar-taveras-a-thought-exercise/

>Interesting, I hadn't heard the Tavares for Profar talk, it
>will be interesting to see what the Rangers do with him seeing
>as how they just gave $120mil to Elvis Andrus who's currently
>batting eight right now, lol

Yeah. I get the reasoning, that Andrus' glove and more-than-acceptable-in-the-post-Jeter/ARod/Garciaparra-era bat justified the extension. But it seemed like they didn't quite consider how south the bat could go. And it's ... pretty far south.

2 rings and another appearence ain't nothing to sneeze at or forget. he is a Hall of famer and a winner. the Lou needs to tip there cap to him and tell him thank you for his domiannce and what he brought to the city period.

how soon folks forget?

cool, spoken like a fan of a franchise with no chance of winning shit in his lifetime.

make more

man you shoulda gone to friday's game, huh?

A HR short of the cycle +1

yeah, they were sorry as shit

Philippe's for the pregame was official though

I don't know what Chollie was doing, other than chomping his gum

there were at least 2 instances of runners sliding past the bag

and he never budged from the top stair

I don't remember if it was the 5th or the 6th

but he just left KK in there I think 2 innings in a row

and he eventually got to the pitchers spot and out of the inning

after giving up +runs

I was throwing the hook sign at least a full inning before Chollie mozied on out there

damn

.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
<---- 5....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dlgiritpmfo

=======================================
Occupy Big Government..

Fannie, Freddie dole out big bonuses
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1011/67292.html

and encouraged

feel free to mention jason bay here

and then bump up that bobby bo thread for extra effect

safe to say the phils got more out of howard than the mets did from those 2 bums

his injury won them the series.

was a bad idea no matter what. especially in the NL. but I'm not going to party off it, because nearly every contender has a similar albatross contract.

howard played cheap while under team control, that can't be said of pujols, prince, et al.

it was an iffy decision, sure, but i think most GMs would have done the same thing.

http://soundcloud.com/djshinobishaw
http://www.rareformnyc.com
http://twitter.com/DJShinobiShaw
https://twitter.com/RareFormNYC
PSN: ShinobiShaw

"Arm Leg Leg Arm How you doin?" (c)T510

how many dudes in the NHL do i talk to say that "philly is brutal!" in some fashion or another? loads! that is what a crowd advantage can be and is all about.

they also know we know the score. all sorts of dudes have talked about how the fans are knowledgeable and want to see the game played the right way, period. there are idiots and their volume is turned up like everyone else's, but in the end the fans in philly command respect, period.

and I was doing that before he got hurt, so go cry about it somewhere else.

with his pre-injury decline (which y'all spent 200+ posts denying before) he'd be platoon level now anyway.

actually he hit lefties better in 2010 than he did in either of the World Series appearance years. 2011 was a dip back down, sure, but there is no convincing any reasonable person (or an unreasonable one like me) that without the injury he was going to become a platoon player. he had bad splits his whole career, and it never happened.

now, i will leave you to all the intrigue that is mets beisbol. the burning question, will they catch houston for the worst home record in the bigs?

I think this is pretty much what incremental decline looks like

Total/v. LHP

2006 - 1.084 OPS .346 ISO (.923 OPS .279 ISO)
2007 - .976 OPS .316 ISO (.826 OPS .268 ISO)
2008 - .881 OPS .292 ISO (.746 OPS .228 ISO)
2009 - .931 OPS .292 ISO (.653 OPS .149 ISO)
2010 - .859 OPS .229 ISO (.826 OPS .228 ISO)
2011 - .835 OPS .235 ISO (.634 OPS .124 ISO)
(INJURY)
2012 - .718 OPS .204 ISO (.604 OPS .204 ISO)
2013 - .784 OPS .199 ISO (.539 OPS .148 ISO)

There's always a temptation to guess what would have happened if some injury hadn't occurred, but those injuries are the reasons people have identified these aging curves. Guys get older, fatter, and their bodies get beat up. Howard's achilles was discrete and catastrophic, but it's in the same "shit happens" pile as Mattingly's back and Hrbek's... everything.

Howard's BBRef top ten features a bunch of guys with similar post-30 fades like Richie Sexson. The law of anti-climax says that Howard isn't done just like Ortiz wasn't done, though. It'd be kind of cool if there was a way to identify some kind of shift in peripherals for prediction of a brief comeback season. It's never been entirely clear to me whether the phrase Indian Summer was offensive or not, but ... one of those. I'm sure that even if it isn't then it's not really worth preserving, but we don't really have a good alternative. Whatever it is, apply it also to Carlos Delgado's 2008.

Wikipedia has a list of equivalent terms. Apparently a whole bunch of western european cultures use a fall saint's day and just name a summer after him or her. This was my favorite description though:

"In Hungary, it's "vénasszonyok nyara" (Old Ladies' Summer or Crone's Summer) because the many white spiders seen at this time of the year have been associated with the norns of Norse folklore or medieval witches."

and have a David Ortiz act 2.

no one wants them when things look bleak, and then if they recover at all then there is no reason to just dump them.

i still love howard for all he's done for the franchise. i hope he can turn this around somehow, but i'm not hopeful.

so ya he could work

In Loving Memory of Ryan Howard
By Michael Baumann on July 9, 2013 10:15 AM ET

Yesterday, the Phillies put Ryan Howard on the disabled list so that he could undergo surgery to repair the torn meniscus in his left knee. It was the latest agonizing turn in the career of a player who was once one of the best power hitters in the game, but is now hobbling out the last days of his career like a racehorse with a broken leg.

Howard was superb in his early years, winning Rookie of the Year in 2005, then hitting 58 home runs and winning the MVP in 2006. He hit at least 45 home runs in each of the next three seasons and at least 30 the two years after that. Since then, he’s suffered a catastrophic injury to his Achilles tendon and returned a shell of his former self, partially because age robs baseball players not only of speed and health, but of bat speed as well.

Aside from the physical deterioration, Howard has, over the years, seen his production devastated by opposition scouting reports. He can hit a grooved fastball most of the way to Mars, but he sees very few of those anymore. In fact, among players with 1,000 or more plate appearances since 2007, only Miguel Olivo has seen a lower percentage of fastballs than Howard, and Miguel Olivo will swing at anything.

The book on Howard is that you throw him breaking stuff, low and out of the zone, because he’ll always swing and always miss. And anything he does hit is almost always pulled. And he can’t hit lefties at all — in 2009, when he hit 45 home runs and finished third in MVP voting, he still only hit .207/.298/.356 against lefties, a dropoff of more than 400 points of OPS from his numbers against right-handed pitching. As he’s gotten older, it’s only gotten worse: This year, he hit .173/.218/.321 against left-handed pitching, though he still managed an impressive .302/.357/.522 against right-handers.

It’s an easy book to follow: Bring in a lefty, throw Howard slop out of the zone, and shift your defense so far over to the right side that people will think Jean-Marie Le Pen is playing second base. And Howard, like Charlie Brown trying to kick a football, will either miss entirely or hit it into the shift.

The result of all this is that Howard has gradually, inexorably, and painfully become something of a depressing spectacle. And while a broken-down 33-year-old first baseman might ordinarily be the kind of commodity a team in transition — like the Phillies — might try to unload, he carries with him a millstone of a contract that, as SB Nation’s Steven Goldman explains here and Bill Baer of Crashburn Alley explains here, was a mistake when the Phillies offered it to him three years ago.

Howard was brought up and signed as an impact bat, the kind of franchise tentpole that produces runs and wins and championships, and he exists largely in our memory as that. But that’s not what he is anymore. Today, Howard is a platoon DH, still potent against righties but awful against lefties, and entirely bereft of value as a base runner or defender. He’s a player who’s done such great things and deserves to go out with more dignity than he’s going to get.

And the Phillies, an organization that values experience and a lengthy CV as much as any in the sport, aren’t going to remove Howard from the cleanup spot anytime soon. Over the past couple weeks, they’ve been resting him against lefties more and more, for his knee’s sake, but when he’s healthy, Howard hits fourth. Even when Carlos Ruiz slugs .540 in 2012, even when Domonic Brown homers just about every night for two weeks.

So thanks to his contract and his reputation, odds are that we will watch Howard sink even further into his athletic senescence, in the cleanup spot, every night for the next three years. It’s going to be awful, not just because the Phillies are trying to build around a horse with a broken leg, but because we’re going to have to watch it unfold in slow-motion.

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