We should probably stop pitching to Ryan Howard. To wit, here are his numbers from 2012-2015:
Against Atlanta: 161 PA, .217/.304/.497, 12 HR, 32 RBI
Against all other teams: 1145 PA, .233/.307/.402, 39 HR, 170 RBI
Just for comparison, Jeff Francoeur’s career triple slash is .261/.305/.417, meaning that our pitchers turn Ryan Howard from Jeff Francoeur into Dave Kingman.
And that’s just what happened last night, when the newest member of our starting rotation, Trevor Cahill, had a vintage 2006 Tim Hudson Episode in the first inning, then basically settled down for the rest of the game, allowing just three hits and one run the rest of the way.