BillyV's Blog

5/14/08

It was way overblown.  Ryan Howard’s slump had some fans booing, others saying he should be benched, and still others demanding that he be traded.   All of which is an unfortunate overreaction.  Baseball players have slumps.  Home run hitters especially have slumps.  A player as talented and hard-working as Ryan Howard is eventually going to come out of it.

That’s the part that bothered me most-- people saying that Howard wasn’t working hard.  They assume that, because he won a ten million dollar arbitration award this off-season, he relaxed and stopped working.  It’s just not true.  The folks who are close to the situation tell me Howard is working as hard as ever.  Phillies hitting coach Milt Thompson told me the opposite might be true—that Howard was pressing, trying to prove he deserved the money.

Thompson’s been working with Howard on making technical adjustments.  He was opening up his swing too soon.   

The work by Howard and Thompson is paying off.  Howard’s homer tonight was his second in the last four games, and he has had a hit in six straight.  So it appears he has figured things out and is breaking out of the slump.

The bottom line, in my view, is that Howard, despite the occasional slumps, is going to hit more than 500 homers in his career.  I’d rather see him do it in a Phillies uniform that someone else’s.  That’s V’s view—what’s yours?