Tommy Joseph’s Stats vs Righties Better Than Ryan Howard

The Ryan Howard situation is just unbearable to watch. It’s Tommy’s turn.

You have to feel sorry for the guy, who has had some of the best seasons ever in a Phillies uniform.

But we have hit the breaking point. No, we have passed the breaking point, and are clinging like the last string of a frayed rope.

Ryan Howard needs to find a comfortable spot on the bench, and stay there.

The mentality since Tommy Joseph was brought up earlier this month was Joseph would hit off lefties and Howard would hit against righties.

But first, lets look at their overall numbers this season. Ryan Howard is hitting .154 with 22 hits, eight home runs and 19 RBIs. In his last 50 at bats, he has five hits. One of those was a home run.

He is 18th on the team in batting average, which is behind Vincent Velasquez, Darin Ruf, Jared Eickhoff, Charlie Morton(!), Jeremy Hellickson, Peter Bourjos, and Brett Oberholtzer.

If you were to combine all their hits and at bats and find a batting average, they’d be hitting .249.

Of the seven Phillies pitchers with an at bat (Velasquez, Morton, Nola, Oberholtzer, Morgan, Eickhoff, Hellickson), the combined batting average is .156 this season.

The only Phillies hitter on the 25 man roster with a worst batting average is Emmanuel Burris, who must come into the locker room every day looking like Charlie Sheen from Major League getting a red demotion card in his locker.

It’s bad.

Really bad.

In 36 at bats this year, Tommy Joseph is hitting a respectable .278 with 10 hits, three home runs, five RBI’s and a stolen base as a cherry on top.

Thanks to math (which I have never liked until this moment) we can see in just a small sample size, Tommy Joseph performs better against righties than Ryan Howard.

In 125 at bats against righties, which is supposed to be his specialty this year, Ryan Howard is hitting .160/.230/.352/.582. That is abysmal on every level.

In 24 at bats, granted it’s a lot fewer opportunities and I’d hate to look like I’m cherry-picking, Tommy Joseph is hitting .208/.192/.500/.692. Also, two of his three home runs have come off right-handed pitchers.

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Now of course, hitting .208 is nothing to hang your hat on, but the slugging and OPS can be. While this is in limited at bats, a .500 slugging percentage (which is total bases/at bats) would be higher than

Mike

Giancarlo Stanton, Paul Goldschmidt, Joc Pederson, and Hunter Pence among many more.

Amongst rookies with more than 30 at bats, it would be the third highest in baseball.

Then against the lefties, whom he was brought up to face, he is hitting .417 with an OPS of 1.128. Unheard of numbers, once again in limited at bats.

When the guy who is supposed to be bad at hitting righties is doing better than the starter, that’s when you know it is time for a change.

It will be sad to ultimately see one of the best power hitters of the past decade finally go, but the time is now. The future is now. The Phillies franchise must find out what they have in Tommy Joseph, who was a bluechip prospect before his concussions behind the plate.

Am I saying Tommy Joseph is the next coming of Ryan Howard/Chase Utley/Jimmy Rollins and will lead us to a World Series? No, but I’ll take anything right now over a .160 batting average.