“Clean” Howard Making Bid for Home Run Record; MVP

The Most Valuable Player award in baseball is nine times out of ten awarded to a player whose team is headed to the playoffs. The one exception was in 2003 when Alex Rodriguez won the MVP on a Texas Rangers team that went 71-91 and landed fourth in the AL West Division. The realm of thought is that if a player cannot lift his team into being a contender for the World Series, then they can’t be as valuable to a their team as a player with possible lesser statistics who is helping their team reach the championship. The 2005 rookie of the year Ryan Howard has been backbone of the Phillies this season, hitting dramatic second-level homeruns at a record pace and keeping his band of scrappy young ball players in wild playoff contention.

Howard has been consistent all year even when the team was thought to be packing it in: parting with players like Bobby Abreu, Corey Lidle and third baseman David bell. Yet the talk of the MVP race has been only starting to murmur around Howard ever since the Phillies began making a legitimate run for the wild card lead. Howard is hitting over .300% average and leads the league with 53 homeruns and 134 runs batted in — which is the most by a Phillie since 1932. Howard recently passed Hall-of-Famer Ralph Kiner’s 51 homerun sophomore season in 1947 with his 52nd homerun blast; to be only the second player (along with Kiner) in the history of baseball to hit 49 plus homeruns in his second season.

At first glance; skeptics may point to the Phillies’ “hitter friendly” ball park for Howard’s ultra production. Yet away from home, Ryan is just as destructive a force; hitting for a steady .308% average with 25 homeruns and 64 RBI’s away from Citizens Bank Park.

All of these broken records and more come with 24 remaining games in the season, thus placing Howard’s torrid pace currently in the lead to win the MVP race, and to stir up a national debate of broken trust between the fans and steroid use and if Howard is the first unquestionably “clean” player to catch Roger Maris’ homerun record of 61 in a single season.

Other players who are in contention for the NL MVP are the New York Mets’ outfielder Carlos Beltran and St. Louis Cardinals’ first basemen Albert Pujols. Pujols who is considered to be the all around best player in the National League, if not the entire Major Leagues was the favorite to win the MVP from the beginning of the season and he no doubt deserves a serious look. Pujols is the reigning MVP of the national league and has been the glue that has held an injury-cursed Cardinals team together through their up and down struggles this season. Albert is batting an incredible .321 average with 43 homeruns and 115 RBI’s, which are remarkable numbers considering he has played 17 games less than Ryan Howard, mostly due to his own injury bug.

Carlos Beltran has similar numbers to Pujols but may be less of a contender for the MVP due to the fact that the Mets have been too successful; having the NL East all but wrapped up by the all-star break. Met’s third basemen David Wright and shortstop Jose Reyes also can be considered to be the Met’s most valuable players for the 2006 season, and because there can be a stiff argument on who deserves the team’s MVP, it would be difficult for any of them to be the outright winner of the National League’s most valued personal honor.

MVP honors can be a fickle and sensitive thing, and with as many games as there are left in the 2006 regular season, anything is possible. Currently Ryan Howard is at the top of a talented heap but he is one slump away from being replaced. If a National League team puts together a hot streak — and makes a run to win the wild card, new names could be at the top of the list. But MVP or not, congratulations to a deserving Howard for his jaw-dropping homeruns in September and the possibility of a legendary story.

UPDATE* 

Ryan Howard, coming off a minor slump hit his 58th home run Friday, Sep. 22nd, against the Florida Marlins in Philadelphia.   His RBI total is now 143 while batting .313.

Edited by L. Olivia Piotti

Photo by AP Photo/Rusty Kennedy