By Tim Kelly, Sports Talk Philly editor 
No one's going to mistake the end of Ryan Howard's Philadelphia Phillies career as a success. Nor will anyone ever praise the three-year/$27 million extension that former general manager Ruben Amaro and former president David Montgomery gave Ruiz at the age of 35. However unceremonious the final season of both of their careers in Philadelphia have ended up being, the two seem to be finishing up well.
Howard wouldn't have been in Philadelphia in 2016 if he wasn't guaranteed a contract, but after his month of May — where he hit just .101 and posted a slugging percentage of .261 — he looked like someone who didn't belong playing at the Major League level anymore. While his average still is below the mendoza line, Howard has rebounded from the worst month of his career recently. After batting .250 in July, Howard is batting .467 with two homeruns and five RBIs in August. While he's only batted 15 times this month, Howard looks like a different hitter than he did a couple of months ago, and does now have 16 home runs on the season, a sign that once elite power seems to have outlived other aspects of his game.
Ruiz has bounced back across the board from a 2015 where he batted just .211 and posted his lowest dWAR since 2006. Ruiz is batting .265 with three home runs and 18 RBIs this season. He's also improved his dWAR from 3.1 in 2015 to 6.3 in 2016, seeming more effective when truly being used in a backup role. After batting .159 in May and .207 in June, Ruiz batted .407 in 27 July at-bats. In August, Ruiz has four hits in 10 at-bats, while driving in two runs and even stealing two bases.
Howard told MLB.com's Todd Zolecki earlier this week that both him and Ruiz hope to play in 2017, but both will be looking for new homes for the first time in their careers. While it's probably not impossible that the Phillies bring Ruiz back in 2017, it's 99 percent likely that he won't be back with the team. The Phillies will buy out Ruiz's $4.5 million option for $500,000 and seem extremely unlikely to attempt to re-sign him with the emergence of Cameron Rupp and Andrew Knapp likely to make the team out of Spring Training in 2017. Howard will be bought out of his $23 million option for $10 million, and even he conceded early this year that 2016 was 'probably it' with the Phillies.
While it's fair to wonder whether Howard and Ruiz will get more than minor league offers with Spring Training invites for the 2017 season — assuming both that they even get that and that they do indeed attempt to continue playing, it seems fitting for the two to be finishing strong in what is likely the last season for both in Philadelphia. Ruiz is certainly in the discussion for greatest catcher in franchise history and is one of the most universally liked players in Philadelphia sports over the last decade. Howard, though he has his detractors, was one of the core players for the greatest five year run in franchise history and at his peak was one of the more dominant power hitters the league has ever seen. A strong finish from the duo is pretty cool.
The nuggets
- After 2008, Chase Utley, Jimmy Rollins and Cole Hamels felt like the most likely to be "Phillies for life."Instead, if Ruiz and Howard don't play after 2016, they will have achieved that.
- In the last week of the season, Carlos Ruiz should catch a majority of the games and Ryan Howard should play a majority at first base. The New York Yankees are still mathmatically in contention, though they seemed to wave the white flag at the non-waiver trade deadline, and yet Joe Girardi won't allow Alex Rodriguez to play third base in his final game. It's lame, but the Phillies have handled the final season of two of their icons pretty well, so it appears unlikely that a similar situation will present itself late in the year, especially considering both already play in the field when they do play.
- I don't necessarily think Jim Thome should be in the Phillies Wall of Fame, but the future Hall of Famer is one of the all-time great guys to play the game and lended his legendary power to Philadelphia for a few years. So this weekend should be pretty fun at Citizens Bank Park.
- This is the second edition of "Phillies nuggets" in two days. Yesterday's pertained to how the Phillies need to be patient when deciding the future of Odubel Herrera.
