Ryan Howard's struggles have been quite horrible lately. And Bill Conlin does a real nice job documenting the range of differing opinions on The Big Guy's penchant for walking back to the dugout with his head down. Put me in the Mitch Williams school of philosophy:
I direct the "Just Leave Him Alone . . . " folks to Mitch Williams,
who is a passionate advocate of that approach. The Wild Thing is
unwavering in his belief that you don't just have back-to-back seasons
of 58 and 47 homers with a total of 285 RBI by accident. This is a
brutally honest guy, by the way, who in 15 years has not attempted to
deflect an ounce of blame for that pitch he made to Joe Carter
in Game 6 of the Phillies' most recent World Series. "He'll figure it
out," Mitch says, "just like he did the last 2 years."
I kind of feel like Howard is getting a bit of a pass. The Flyers playoff run and the Sixers brief playoff appearance has taken some of the spotlight away from Ryan and his amazing strikeout numbers.
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Honestly, there's probably only one solution: Ryan Howard needs another vacation.
>>Suddenly there are more experts than strikeouts in Ryan Howard's slump [Inquirer]