Philadelphia Phillies' Ryan Howard on Pace to Eclipse 200 Strikeouts

While the Philadelphia Phillies' Ryan Howard leads all of Major League Baseball with 30 homers and the National League with 94 runs batted in, he also has the lead in a category he would rather not win. His 138 strikeouts are tops in baseball, but amazingly he has some competition for this dubious crown from the likes of Oakland's Jack Cust and Arizona's Mark Reynolds. Howard already owns the single season strikeout mark of 199, set just last year, and earlier in the year was on pace to blow that figure out of the water. However, he has been making better contact lately at the plate, with the result being that he still could break his record but still wind up without it!

That would take some doing, not on Howard's part but from Cust, who has garnered his 131 whiffs in 317 at-bats as compared to 401 for Howard. Cust fanned 164 times last season in just 124 contests, so the question for him is whether or not he gets enough at-bats the rest of the way to eclipse Howard. Both are left-handed hitters that swing for the fences, something Howard had accomplished much more often than Cust has. The guess here though is that Cust won't be able to catch Howard with a bit over two months to go in the season.

Mark Reynolds strikes out over a third of the time, as the righty third baseman has 128 Ks in 342 at-bats. He has 21 homers and 66 runs batted in in his 97 games and would seem to be a long shot to pass both Cust and Howard for the Major League Baseball strikeout crown in 2008. They both struggle mightily when facing southpaws, with Ryan batting just .189 against lefties and Cust at .207.

Howard has been much better in July than he was earlier in the year, striking out just 24 times so far as compared to 37 in March/April, 40 in May, and 36 in June. Already this year he has worn the "Golden Sombrero", a baseball cliché signifying four strikeouts in one game, a pair of times, once against the Red Sox and another game versus the Mets. The "hat trick", three in one game, is commonplace for Howard; he has done this in 2008 a total of nine times, including five in the month of May.

Ryan's batting average for July is .311, far better than the ones he put up in the first three months of this campaign when he hit .168, .238, and .234 for April, May, and June respectively. That extra contact though is a fleeting thing with the 28 year old first baseman, as he is prone to flailing away at off-speed pitches and can be made to look downright foolish on occasion. However, the Phillies are paying him to hit the ball out of the park and drive in runs, not win a batting title. His 94 RBI, after a horrific start to the season which saw him with just a dozen on May 1st, lead the senior circuit by 12 over the Padres' Adrian Gonzalez and the Astros' Carlos Lee. As a matter of fact, Howard is only 9 behind Texas Ranger Josh Hamilton for the Major League Baseball lead, and with the hot weather that Hamilton will be playing in during August and September, it is a very real possibility that he will relinquish that category to Howard by year's end.

If Howard averages what he has each month in the two that are left to play he will finish with 207 strikeouts. It would be unwise to bet against that number, as the Phillies will certainly be in the divisional chase with the Mets and Marlins into the final days of the season and in the wild card hunt as well, meaning there will be no taking Howard out of the lineup just to avoid cracking the 200 strikeout plateau. And if Howard goes into a funk then he will be in the unheard of 220 or 230 range, a number that is almost beyond belief when one considers that the great Joe DiMaggio struck out just 369 times in his entire 13 seasons, and never more than 39 times in one year. Howard beat that number this May!