{"id":44560,"date":"2017-04-07T20:20:05","date_gmt":"2017-04-08T00:20:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/?p=44560"},"modified":"2020-07-31T20:20:18","modified_gmt":"2020-08-01T00:20:18","slug":"lol-braves-ryan-howard-really","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/?p=44560","title":{"rendered":"lol Braves: Ryan Howard, really?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/span><\/p>\n

SMH<\/a>: Braves sign Ryan Howard to minor league deal<\/span><\/p>\n

I can only imagine the things the talking heads said to themselves\/one another to justify thinking that this was a fantastic idea.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThis guy has killed us for years.\u00a0 He\u2019s hit 52 home runs against us.\u00a0 We should get him!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThis guy has killed the Nats\/Mets\/Marlins throughout his career.\u00a0 We should get him!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThis guy is a former rookie of the year, MVP and a World Series winner.\u00a0 We should get him!\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

None of those are wrong statements, but they\u2019re mostly applicable to the first half of his career, before a torn ACL pretty much destroyed his career after 2011.\u00a0 The reality of the situation is that since that injury, he\u2019s been a shell of his former self, batting .226 and hitting an average of 19 home runs a season, which isn\u2019t 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.<\/span><\/p>\n

In all honesty, this really isn\u2019t a bad signing.\u00a0 It\u2019s a minor league deal, which basically means that Ryan Howard is basically getting a set minor league salary while he\u2019s playing in the minor leagues trying to prove that he\u2019s still capable of playing baseball, and if he gets called up to the majors, he\u2019ll get a pro-rated major league minimum salary, minus any incentives worked into the contract.\u00a0 It\u2019s a very low risk, high reward deal for the Braves, and if they didn\u2019t pull the trigger, undoubtedly someone else would have.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The ridicule and the head-shaking primarily comes from the fact that it\u2019s 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.\u00a0 Seriously, I\u2019ve seen so many Ryan Howard home runs against the Braves in person, including one last year<\/em> when he sucked at baseball, that it\u2019s going to be really difficult to see him playing for the Braves, much less be wearing Braves organizational gear.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u2019t 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\u2019s even bothering to keep trying to play at all when he\u2019s got probably nine figures in the bank.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ultimately, this is probably a storyline that has very little repercussion on the season as a whole.\u00a0 Again, it\u2019s just that it\u2019s a notorious nemesis joining the squad that makes it a story at all.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.<\/span><\/p>\n

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.<\/span><\/p>\n

The most likely reality is that Ryan Howard works hard because stats and contracts aside, he\u2019s always demonstrated decent citizenship, sportsmanship and character and gets back into an acceptable playing shape.\u00a0 He\u2019s 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.\u00a0 He struggles to be anything more than a fairly mediocre player at the major league level, and he\u2019s occasionally improperly used and still gets victimized by left-handed pitching by smarter strategic managers, and the Braves end up cutting him by July.<\/span><\/p>\n

But still, seeing Ryan Howard with a Braves logo across his chest?\u00a0 That\u2019ll never be an easy pill to swallow.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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. \u201cThis guy has killed us for years.\u00a0 He\u2019s hit 52 home runs against us.\u00a0 We should get him!\u201d \u201cThis guy has killed the Nats\/Mets\/Marlins … Continue reading lol Braves: Ryan Howard, really?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[62,66,79,64],"class_list":["post-44560","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brog","tag-baseball","tag-braves","tag-cashmoney","tag-minor-leagues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44560","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=44560"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44560\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44562,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44560\/revisions\/44562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=44560"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=44560"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=44560"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}