Kuzul

Here’s a little baseball trivia for you: how many major league baseball players with the first name of “Ryan” have there been in baseball history?

The answer is 45.

Here’s another one: how many of those players played before 1990?

The answer is one: Ryan Kurosaki.

What’s going on here? Has the overall popularity of the name “Ryan” spiked in the last 30 years? Are teams more likely to sign guys named Ryan? What’s the deal?

We have a theory: a whole generation of children born during Nolan Ryan’s hey-day have been named after the Ryan Express by baseball-crazy fathers, and those same baseball-crazy fathers have also raised their sons to be ballplayers.

Crazy? Perhaps. But the evidence, albeit circumstantial, is there.

For example, let’s take a look that the 2010 All-Ryan All Star Team.

Begin Slideshow

The air has turned cool, the leaves are turning brown, and the NFL is ready for some football.

That’s right, Phillies fans, September is here once again, and we all know what that means: Ryan Howard is ready to kick his game up a notch.

Or actually, a few notches.

As the Phillies have returned to the top of the NL East on the strength of their dominant pitching and resurgent offense, much has been made of late of how amazing Howard has been during his career in the month of September.

To put Howard’s dominance in September in perspective, let’s do this: as of Monday, September 13th, Howard has now played the equivalent of one full season of games in the month of September. Howard has 153 games, totaling 716 plate appearances and 598 at-bats.

With that in mind, let’s look at Howard’s career numbers in September and analyze how good they would be if they were single-season totals in a given year.

Begin Slideshow

Only July 21st of this year, the Philadelphia Phillies lost to the St. Louis Cardinals in St. Louis. The loss was the sixth in seven games for the Phils, and dropped the team to just two games over .500 and 7.0 games behind the Braves in the NL East.

The season looked to be all but over for the Phils, who weren’t playing particularly well in any facet of the game.

Now, on September 9th, less than two months later, the Phillies have the best record in the National League.

Here is a look at some stats from during that period that we just wouldn’t have believed on that July night when we thought our season was over.

Begin Slideshow

One of the reasons, if not the reason, I got into baseball writing was to challenge conventional wisdom. Challenging conventional wisdom is what we learned from Bill James and from Billy Beane, and it is the reason we tend to speak unfavorably of Joe Morgan.

Since moving to Philadelphia, one bit of local conventional wisdom I have been quick to challenge has been the notion that Ryan Howard is one of the greatest run producers of all time. This hasn’t made me incredibly popular amongst my local readers and fellow writers (Jamie Ambler?), but it is a notion to which I have never warmed.

Are You Saying Ryan Howard isn’t a Good RBI Guy?

There can be no doubt in that during the last five baseball seasons, Ryan Howard has established himself as one of the premier RBI men in Major League Baseball. Howard has led the National League in RBI in three of the last four seasons and the only reason he didn’t lead the league in 2007 was because Matt Holliday won the RBI crown in a season-ending tiebreaker game with San Diego.

(By the way, counting one-game playoffs to be regular season games: There’s a rule worth revisiting.)

How unique is Howard’s performance over this period? Consider the following:

Since the advent of the American League in 1901, only six players in Major League Baseball have led their league in RBI’s three years in a row: Ty Cobb (1907-1909), Babe Ruth (1919-1921), Rogers Hornsby (1920-1922), Joe Medwick (1936-1938), George Foster (1976-1978), and Cecil Fielder (1990-1992).

If not for the Colorado Rockies and San Diego Padres finishing the 2007 season tied for second place in the NL West, Howard would have become the first player since 1901 to lead his league four years in a row; consider also that Howard only played 144 games in 2007, and you have to say “wow.”

So How Can You Say He Isn’t a Great Run Producer?

Nevertheless, given the potency of the Philadelphia Phillies lineup over that period and the general discrediting of the RBI as an indicator of value, however, I have been quick to discredit any sort of significance that has been placed upon Howard and his RBI totals.

After all, from a statistical perspective, Howard is not the best hitter in the National League; indeed, he is not really even the best hitting first baseman in the NL, and he may not even be in the top five.

And so my theory went thus: If you were to plug Albert Pujols or Adrian Gonzalez into the Phillies‘ lineup, not only would they easily lead the NL in RBI, but they may even set the National League record for RBI in a season.

This is not an unsupportable conclusion to reach, for Howard’s RBI have not been a one man show.

In 2006, when Howard first led the NL in runs driven in, Chase Utley led the league in runs with 132, and Jimmy Rollins didn’t finish too far behind with 127.

In 2007, Howard did not lead the NL but finished with an astounding 136 ribs nonetheless, and that season, J-Roll led the NL in runs scored with 139 while Utley and Aaron Rowand each scored over 100 runs.

In 2008, when Howard once again led the NL, the Phils had three guys score 100 runs, and when he did it again in 2009, they had four guys score 100 runs.

Doesn’t it seem like Pujols, Gonzalez, or any other elite hitter would be able to easily pace the National League in this category if they had the luxury of hitting behind Rollins, Utley, and company?

Good Point. Maybe Ryan Howard Isn’t Actually a Great Run Producer.

But then a funny thing happened: the 2010 season came along and challenged everything we know to be true.

Remember when we used to think that the Phillies had an “American League-style” offense? Not any more we don’t. We have become a team that plays a ton of one-run nail-biters.

Remember when we used to think that the Phillies were the type of team that won games with an elite offense in spite of their pitching? In 2010, our pitching has become our strong suit, and it is our offense that makes us want to look away.

As an aside, this is no reason for panic and no knock on this team. In fact, I believe that an argument could be that the 2010 team, with a simply dominant front three of Halladay, Hamels, and Oswalt, is more well-equipped to win the playoffs than either the 2008 team or the 2009 team. But I digress.

Where was I? Right. The 2010 Phillies offense has been terrible.

And it isn’t really their fault; The 2010 Phillies have suffered injuries to every major offensive contributor other than Jayson Werth, who himself has had mysterious issues at the plate. If this team had been healthy, who knows what we would have looked like on offense.

Which brings me back to Ryan Howard, and my point.

Finally.

Hitting behind scrubs and subs this season, with an incredibly inconsistent and unspectacular lineup, and himself having suffered injuries and hitting slumps, Howard has nevertheless collected 95 RBI this season.

Which, somehow, puts him fourth in the National League and only five RBI behind league leader Carlos Gonzalez of the Colorado Rockies. Somehow, in an injury-plagued and slump-marred season, Howard has only three fewer ribs than Pujols and four fewer than Joey Votto, both of whom are having significantly better overall seasons, and whom most watchers expect to be vying for the NL MVP.

Unlike previous seasons, you can’t discredit this one. You can’t point to Utley and Rollins and say that anyone would produce runs behind those guys. You can’t point to the Phillies offense and say it is designed to score runs. You can’t even really credit the Phils’ ballpark.

When all is said and done, the point is becoming undeniable: Ryan Howard is one of the greatest run producers of all time.

How conventional.

Asher B. Chancey lives in Philadelphia and is a co-founder of BaseballEvolution.com.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

Over the course of what has been dubbed both “the Year of the Pitcher” and “the Year of the Rookie,” the baseball viewing world has ridden quite the figurative roller coaster.

At the beginning of the 2010 season, the world was abuzz with expectation and prediction regarding Washington Nationals phenom Stephen Strasburg, and he didn’t fail to impress, striking out 14 batters in six innings in his major league debut. Unfortunately, the excitement was short-lived, and we won’t be hearing from Strasburg until some time in 2012.

Never fear, though: there is a new phenom of the month, and his name is Aroldis Chapman. Like Strasburg, Chapman has the ability to kick the radar gun up over 100 mph. His 103 has been the talk of baseball.

But are we just setting ourselves up for another fall? Is Chapman simply destined to suffer the same fate as Strasburg?

Here’s ten reasons to think maybe he is.

Begin Slideshow

It may be all over except for the crying.

With eight innings of one-hit ball on Thursday afternoon against the Oakland Athletics, C.C. Sabathia has become the front-runner for the AL Cy Young Award, and he may have even clinched it.

Why?

Well, I’ll tell ya.  C.C. Sabathia will be the 2010 AL Cy Young Award winner because . . . 

Begin Slideshow

The Florida Marlins and the Washington Nationals engaged in a pretty ugly melee on Wednesday night, and the more I read about the events as they transpired the more I am beginning to think that something isn’t right.

For those of you who missed it—and there can’t be that many of you left—the whole thing actually started in the top of the tenth inning the previous night. With the Nationals’ incredibly speedy Nyjer Morgan on second base and one out in a scoreless ballgame, Adam Kennedy hit a bouncer to second base that looked like it might be an inning ending double play.

However, after the flip to second for one, shortstop Hanley Ramirez held onto the ball. He was unable to convert the double play but noticed Morgan racing for home. He threw home to catcher Brett Hayes, who was standing on the plate and caught the ball ahead of Morgan. An instant later, Morgan collided with Hayes at full speed but failed to score.

Morgan was out, the inning was over, and Hayes had a dislocated shoulder.

The Florida Marlins apparently expressed outrage over the collision and their injured catcher. This is the first thing that doesn’t sit right with me.

Collisions at the plate occur all the time in Major League Baseball, and maybe I’ve missed it, but you almost never hear criticism of the colliding players. Pete Rose famously ruined Ray Fosse’s career by colliding with him in an All Star game once; that moment is offered as an anecdote about how Rose was always hustling.

Conversely, the Phillies’ Jayson Werth was recently chastised for not coming in hard at the catcher when the throw from right field on a tag up beat him to home plate by a mile.

I thought collisions at the plate were something we encouraged and admired. I could be wrong, but let’s move on.

So on Wednesday, obviously feeling the need to retaliate against Morgan for his hard play, the Marlins intentionally threw at him in the fourth inning. Sure enough, Morgan got plunked and went to first base.

Now, I have to stop again here to note that the score at the time of this plunking was 14-3 by way of a five run first, a five run second, and a four run third. Somehow, when Morgan led off the game in the first inning there was no retaliation, but once the Marlins were killing the Nats, now they felt was the time to plunk the guy.

Okay.

So now Morgan is standing on first base with one out in the top of the fourth inning in a 14-3 game against a team that just intentionally threw at him. This is where he apparently broke one of the most unwritten rules in all of baseball: a player on a team that is getting shellacked isn’t allowed to steal bases.

Morgan, one of the fastest players in baseball, took off for second base and beat the throw easily. Then, he took off for third and again beat the throw easily.

So let’s stop here. Evidently, the Florida Marlins took exception to Morgan stealing bases in this situation. Wes Helms is on the record as having said that he just can’t stand when a guy doesn’t play the game the right way, and indicated that down ten runs, Morgan had clearly stolen the bases “out of spite.”

Really Wes? Out of spite? What do you call hitting a guy in the fourth inning of a 14-3 game for something that happened the night before? Sounds pretty spiteful to me.

But no, stealing two bases down 14-3 in the fourth inning after having been freakin’ beaned: totally out of line. How dare he!

After the game, Helms said “We had to show we weren’t going to put up with how he was treating us.”

Pardon my language, but are you effing kidding me? The way he was treating you!?

Well, you know the rest: Morgan comes up again in the sixth inning, pitcher Chris Volstad throws behind him, he charges the mound, a brawl breaks out, blah blah blah blah blah.

I gotta tell ya’, I’ve been watching baseball for a long time, and I am not completely sure I am totally on board with what is going on here.

Where I come from, when a player collides with the catcher on a close play at the plate it is called hustle. Where I come from, when you intentionally plunk a guy in retaliation for something, you don’t then get your panties in a bunch when he makes you pay for intentionally putting him on base.

You want to get Nyjer Morgan back for stealing bases on you? Throw him out.

But let’s not go saying that down by 11 runs in the fourth inning a guy isn’t allowed to steal a base. This isn’t football or basketball; a lot of scoring can happen between the fourth and the ninth innings. On August 22, 2007, the Texas Rangers went into the top of the fourth inning with zero runs and ended up winning the game 30-3, so let’s not pretend the game was over.

And for that matter, if you want to talk about “playing the game the right way,” how about not whining about how an opposing player “treats” you when you’ve just hit him with a pitch and you’re up by eleven runs.

And by the way, I don’t think I’ll take my lectures about how to “play the game the right way” from a guy like Wes Helms, who has never managed to put himself into a regular starting role in his entire career.

Maybe, just maybe, if Helms had been a little more hard-nosed and little less concerned about how he was being “treated” by opposing players, he would have become a full-time major leaguer at some point in his career instead of a part-time role player for the cheapest team in baseball.

Nyjer Morgan will likely be suspended for some length of time for what took place over the last few days, but in my opinion it is the Florida Marlins who have come out of this like a bunch of overly-sensitive goons who don’t play the game the right way.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

In a year of stunning rookie performances, Cuban defector and Reds uber-prospect Aroldis Chapman made his major-league debut on Tuesday, facing three batters in one inning of work. The 22-year-old was electric, hitting 103 mph on the radar gun.

More importantly, because Chapman was called up on August 31st, that means that he will be eligible for the postseason roster. If the Reds make the playoffs, Chapman will have the chance to become the latest in a glorious line of rookie call-ups who have had an impact in the postseason before they had a chance to have an impact in the regular season.

Here is a by-no-means exclusive look at some of the most memorable rookie call-ups who have contributed in the postseason in recent years.

Begin Slideshow

If there are two subjects I love, they are baseball and politics. I have had various times in my life when I have been obsessed with both, and I have had various times in my life when I’ve had to shield my eyes from both.

Despite my interest in the two realms, I am always surprised when the two cross over. Sure, conservative political commentator George Will wrote one of the great baseball books of all time, and sure former President George W. Bush owned the Texas Rangers.

Still, I never think of baseball players as political entities and I never think of politicians as sports fans.

And perhaps this is for the best.

I liked Jim Bunning a whole lot more before I found out he was an ultra-right wing crackpot from Kentucky. (Which isn’t to say that all ultra-right wing politicians are crackpots. I very much respect Senator Tom Coburn from Oklahoma, and I find myself to be very fond of Ron Paul. But Bunning is a crackpot.)

I also liked Curt Schilling a whole lot more before he started campaigning for President Bush in 2004.

Nevertheless, I respect the political persuasions of professional athletes, and I also respect their right to support their candidates. Schilling voted for Bush; to me it seemed like a bad idea, but big whoop.

When I found out that Peyton Manning, one of my favorite athletes in the world, was a contributor to the McCain campaign, I was a bit taken aback. In retrospect, though, if I made the money Peyton Manning makes every year, I’d probably find myself on the “less taxes” side of the equation as well.

Big whoop.

Nevertheless, I do find it absolutely shocking that Albert Pujols could be politically tone deaf enough to participate in Glenn Beck’s political rally in Washington this weekend. In order to demonstrate why, let me relay the following conversation I had with my wife on our way from Philadelphia to Baltimore on Saturday morning:

Her: “We’re lucky we’re not going to the Smithsonian instead of the Maryland Science Center.”

Me: “Oh yeah? Why’s that?”

Her: “Because Glenn Beck is having some sort of rally on the Mall, and Al Sharpton is having a rival rally at the same time.”

Me: “Holy crap! That’s gonna be a zoo.”

Her: “Yeah.”

Me: “So, where’s the rally for reasonable, middle of the road people being held?”

At the end of the day, Glenn Beck (and to no less a degree Al Sharpton) is an opportunist; he says incendiary things that rouse his supporters, and weaves that support into gold. Beck is not a politician; he is a rabble-rouser, and someone who stirs up trouble to further his own personal gains.

Wanna know what the difference between a national television personality and a national politician is? If a national television personality can get 20 million viewers per week, he will be a huge success; if a national politician were to get 20 million votes in an election, it would be a disaster.

And so it is that on Saturday, Albert Pujols allowed himself and his image to become part of Glenn Beck’s multi-media machine.  Pujols will now be a pawn in Glenn Beck’s money-making game.

People who know very little about Albert Pujols but hate Glenn Beck will now hate Albert Pujols. And I think that is a shame.

The world is full of people trying to say incendiary things to further their own agendas. In fact, I am only writing this column because the article on Bleacher Report right now that has received the most comments at this very moment is on the same topic. I am even going to finish this article with a flourish so as to motivate more comments. (See? I am no ideologue.)

At the end of the day, if a professional athlete wants to stomp the campaign trail on behalf of a politician they agree with, then they have every right and they should, even if I don’t like their candidate.

(Flourish alert) But to allow oneself to become the victim of an egotistical blow-hard who sews the seeds of division on national television every night simply for the purpose of making himself a millionaire, with absolutely no regard for the very people he pretends to represent, nor the very democracy for which he claims so much concern is unacceptable.

I hate Glenn Beck, and Albert Pujols should too (end of flourish).

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

Man, Ruben Amaro blew it.

He had Cliff Lee in his possession, and threw him away for nothing so that he could acquire Roy Halladay.

And now? The Philadelphia Phillies are screwed. Sure, they picked up Roy Oswalt, but he’s not Cliff Lee, and they had to give up J.A. Happ to get him.

Amaro could have had the best pitching staff in baseball, and he threw it all away.

He sucks.

Except…

It isn’t true. It is a myth. It is a Phillies’ myth, one that Phillies fans have latched onto, and one which they need to let go of.

Here is a look at six such myths.

Begin Slideshow