The Phillies are considering releasing Ryan Howard this off-season. That makes total sense. Ryan Howard is hitting .224 with a .682 OPS. You can take the 60 RBI's, and to a lesser extent the 15 homers, and shove them as far as I'm concerned, they don't nearly make up for a .682 OPS on August 23rd.
It appears to me that the Phillies will attempt to hit Howard lower in the order, and platoon him the rest of this season. They will do their due diligence in figuring out if there is any way to at least make him semi-productive for the life of his contract. I suppose they should do so, and I'm fine with that. I think in the end, they will find that there is no fixing a broken situation. Ryan Howard never recovered from his torn achilles. That's not his fault, health fails athletes at some point. He's not going to magically recover in 2015. He's going to not just take up $25 million, as every obsesses over, but also a starting spot in the line-up, and the playing time that could be handed not just to Darin Ruf, but also Maikel Franco moving forward. If those players can even be a bit productive in 2015, that's better than what the Phillies get from Ryan Howard now.
All of this will lead them to a tough decision- release Howard, which makes baseball sense, or keep trying to platoon him/drop him in the order/beat our head off the wall, because we don't want to pay $60 million for him to leave. Now I'm personally a Howard fan- he's the only jersey I have worn to a game this year– but it's over. It's sad, but he's just not the MVP of 2006. I have to concur with others, it's time to pay the money and start to move on. It's the only way.
