SMH: Braves sign Ryan Howard to minor league deal
I can only imagine the things the talking heads said to themselves/one another to justify thinking that this was a fantastic idea.
“This guy has killed us for years. He’s hit 52 home runs against us. We should get him!”
“This guy has killed the Nats/Mets/Marlins throughout his career. We should get him!”
“This guy is a former rookie of the year, MVP and a World Series winner. We should get him!”
None of those are wrong statements, but they’re mostly applicable to the first half of his career, before a torn ACL pretty much destroyed his career after 2011. The reality of the situation is that since that injury, he’s been a shell of his former self, batting .226 and hitting an average of 19 home runs a season, which isn’t terrible, but this is also a guy that once clubbed 58 in 2006 and 284 in his first six full seasons, regularly putting the fear of god into opposing pitchers and fans of other teams.
In all honesty, this really isn’t a bad signing. It’s a minor league deal, which basically means that Ryan Howard is basically getting a set minor league salary while he’s playing in the minor leagues trying to prove that he’s still capable of playing baseball, and if he gets called up to the majors, he’ll get a pro-rated major league minimum salary, minus any incentives worked into the contract. It’s a very low risk, high reward deal for the Braves, and if they didn’t pull the trigger, undoubtedly someone else would have.
The ridicule and the head-shaking primarily comes from the fact that it’s Ryan Howard: Career Phillie signing with the Atlanta Braves, the team that he punished worse than anyone else in his career, that makes all of this kind of weird, ironic and kind of inappropriate feeling. Seriously, I’ve seen so many Ryan Howard home runs against the Braves in person, including one last year when he sucked at baseball, that it’s going to be really difficult to see him playing for the Braves, much less be wearing Braves organizational gear.
It also comes from the fact that Ryan Howard is coming off a ridiculous contract in which the Phillies paid him $125 million dollars over the span of five years, almost all of them he spent injured and declining, none of which is really his fault, but doesn’t change the fact that it was recognized as one of the worst contracts in baseball history, and that kind of negative stigma sticks with a player for a while, and makes me people wonder why he’s even bothering to keep trying to play at all when he’s got probably nine figures in the bank.
Ultimately, this is probably a storyline that has very little repercussion on the season as a whole. Again, it’s just that it’s a notorious nemesis joining the squad that makes it a story at all. In a perfect world, Ryan Howard proves he can still go, tears up Gwinnett, gets called up to the Majors and plays a perfect back-up first baseman to Freddie Freeman and a terrifying bat off the bench to pinch-hit, and clubs like 15 home runs in limited capacity. He is then flipped to an American League team looking for a good designated hitter for a highly-regarded prospect, and both teams end up happy.
In a not-perfect world, Freddie Freeman gets injured, the Braves have no choice but to rely on an inept, age-and-injury-addled Ryan Howard to start at first base, and the team and the fans are forced to watch a 37-year old Howard continue his decline at the plate, hit .179 and get victimized by left-handed pitching worse than a secretly abusive relationship.
The most likely reality is that Ryan Howard works hard because stats and contracts aside, he’s always demonstrated decent citizenship, sportsmanship and character and gets back into an acceptable playing shape. He’s a fairly mediocre player in Triple-AAA, but the Braves see an opportunity to capitalize on his face value, and call him up anyway, hoping to utilize his ability to still hit right-handed pitching. He struggles to be anything more than a fairly mediocre player at the major league level, and he’s occasionally improperly used and still gets victimized by left-handed pitching by smarter strategic managers, and the Braves end up cutting him by July.
But still, seeing Ryan Howard with a Braves logo across his chest? That’ll never be an easy pill to swallow.
