He was the NL Rookie of the Year, NL MVP and a World Series Champion. By the age of 29, the former Lakewood BlueClaws star has seemingly already done it all in his Major League career, but hes not nearly done yet. Howard is hitting .271 with 37 home runs and 111 RBI this season. Let’s take a look at how those numbers looked on August 7th, just 24 days ago:

.258, 26 home runs, 79 RBI

Over his last 21 games, Howard is hitting .337 with 9 home runs and 32 RBI. Ridiculous.
The Phillies hold a comfortable eight-game lead in the NL East and look as they will cruise to their third-straight division championship. Two years ago, the Phillies clinched the division on the final day of the season and last year, the Phillies clinched with one game to go.

Howard is a late-season phenom. In his career, he is hitting .255 with a .537 slg. before the All-Star break…However, after the break, Howard boasts a .303 average with a .638 slugging.

Howard knows when to turn on his hitting and he has the Phillies as maybe the favorites in the NL to get back to the World Series and potentially win it for the second year in a row.

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This entry was posted on Monday, August 31st, 2009 at 2:42 pm and is filed under Past BlueClaws, Phillies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.