Remembering Frank Howard, the Gentle Giant
PLUS: RANGERS REWRITE RECORD BOOKS IN POST-SEASON PLAY
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Pregame Pepper
Did you know…
You don’t hit, you don’t win: the Braves’ and Dodgers’ offenses, the two most powerful and proficient in 2023, were the worst among the eight teams in Division Series games. Only the Dodgers had a lower average ( .177) and OPS (.498) than the Braves’ .186 and .519. The Braves slugged a record .501 during the season but a pathetic .264 against Philadelphia in the NLDS . . .
San Diego baseball chief AJ Preller is about to hire his sixth manager in 10 years. The list of Preller-hired pilots includes an interim, Pat Murphy, who replaced Bud Black in June 2015 and ran the club for the majority of the season. Preller moved on to Andy Green and Jayce Tingler, two first-time managers and then Bob Melvin, a three-time Manager of the Year who has since moved north to replace Gabe Kapler in San Francisco . . .
According to Statcast, the San Francisco Giants are the slowest team in the majors . . .
With Reggie Jackson a front-office adviser in Houston, the Astros could lure Toronto bench coach Don Mattingly, another ex-Yankee, to succeed the retired Dusty Baker . . .
The longtime ESPN television and radio game-caller Jon Sciambi — and the current television voice of the Chicago Cubs on Marquee Sports Network — made his national radio World Series play-by-play debut last Friday, following Jon Miller and Dan Shulman as ESPN’s radio voices for the World Series. The CBS Radio call prior to ESPN taking over the package in 1998 featured two play-by-play voices that might be familiar — Vin Scully (1979-82 and 1990-97) and Jack Buck (1983-89).
Leading Off
Hondo: the expansion Senators' enduring star
By Andrew Sharp
If anyone on the expansion Senators teams is remembered today by casual fans, surely that player is Frank Howard, who died Oct. 30 at 87.
The massive slugger came to Washington in what undoubtedly was the best trade longtime GM George Selkirk ever made. Posting on a Facebook page about the expansion team in May 2020, Russ White, who covered the Senators for the old Washington Daily News, wrote that manger Gil Hodges pushed for the trade. Hodges had played with the Dodgers and Howard.
Washington had to give up the team’s best pitcher, Claude Osteen, who helped the Dodgers win the 1965 World Series and repeat as N.L. champs in ’66. But not only did the Nats get Howard, they also picked up Ken McMullen, who played a solid third base for the next five seasons, and starting pitchers Pete Richert and Phil Ortega. Richert became an all-star and matched Osteen’s 15 wins with Washington in '64 with 15 of his own in '65.
The real prize, however, was Howard, even though it took a couple of seasons for that to become apparent. It’s hard to believe that Hondo, as he became know, hit just 18 home runs in 1966. Manager Hodges urged Howard not to worry as much about his batting average and concentrate more on hitting for power. Obviously, the 6-foot-7, 275-pound, Hondo had plenty of that: He had hit 31 homers with the Dodgers in ’62 in fewer than 500 at-bats and followed that with 28 in 417 ABs.
Taking the advice, Howard doubled his HR output, hitting 36 in 1967, although his batting average dropped 22 points. The 1967 season began a five-year span in which Hondo led all major-leaguers in home runs, belting 198, one more than Hank Aaron hit over the same period. Howard’s margin was even greater from 1968 through ’70: His 172 homers topped Harmon Killebrew’s 151 and Aaron’s 150.
Hondo’s 1968 season established him as one of the game’s premier sluggers. In a year dominated by pitching, Howard led the majors with 44 homers, many of them tape-measure shots. Along with his career-high 28 doubles, he also led the league in extra- base hits, slugging average and total bases. With Carl Yastrzemski’s .301 average winning the batting crown, Howard’s .274 put him in the top 10. Howard’s 44 homers topped the Washington record of 42 set by Roy Sievers in 1957 and matched by Killebrew in ’59. Howard topped that mark the next season with 48.
In 1968 and 1970, Howard joined the list of fewer than a dozen players who have driven in 20 per cent or more of their team's run in a season. Hondo's 106 RBIs in '68 accounted for 20.2 per cent of the Senators' RBIs.
That matched Babe Ruth's best (with Boston, not the higher-scoring Yankees). In 1919, the soon-to-be Sultan of Swat drove in 114 of the Red Sox's 565 RBIs. Next on the list is Howard again: He drove in 20.1 per cent of Washington's runs in 1970 when he led the league with his career-best 126 RBIs. Of course, like Howard, many of these sluggers played for teams on which they were the only big run-producers. The '68 Nats finished 10th and the '70 team lost 92 games, most in the A.L. East.
A six-game stretch from May 12 to 18, 1968, helped Hondo set slugging marks that have yet to be equaled. In 20 official at-bats, Howard hit 10 home runs. The first of the 10 -- the only one hit at home -- and the last two came off the Tigers’ Mickey Lolich. Two others came off “Sudden” Sam McDowell in Cleveland. One of Howard’s blasts landed on the roof of Tigers’ Stadium.
Howard hit the first of the 10 homers in his third time up on May 12. His last came on his third time up on May 18. So from his first homer on May 12 to his 10th on May 18, he came to the plate 21 times, was walked just once, and had 12 hits in 20 at-bats. His two non-homer hits were a single on May 14 and a double on May 15. (The six-game stretch is often cited as 13 for 24, which includes his first two at-bats on May 12 and his seventh-inning single and a strikeout after homer No. 10.) Hondo drove in 17 runs in the six games.
“Everything fell into place for me,” Howard told MLB.com’s Bill Ladson in 2017. ”As a hitter, sometimes you get into a groove, where you are reading the pitchers well. You are seeing the ball well.”
Hondo’s home runs were frequent –- he homered a league-leading once every 13.6 at-bats in ’68 –- and frequently long, high and deep. At one point, a dozen upper-deck seats at what became Robert F. Kennedy Stadium were painted white to denote where Howard’s prodigious blasts landed. His longest at RFK, hit on Sept. 24, 1967, landed on a seat an estimated 535 feet from home plate.
Ted Williams in 1969 persuaded Howard to be more selective at the plate. The result was Hondo hitting a career-high 48 homers and drawing 102 walks, with a .402 on-base-percentage, and .296 batting average, his best as a Nat and eighth-best in the A.L. The next year, he led the league with 132 bases on balls, 29 of which were intentional –- also tops in the league. His OBP was a career-high .416. Howard led the league in home runs and runs-batted-in in 1970.
Howard’s performance by sabermetric standards also was impressive. His win-above-replacement (WAR) as measured by BaseballReference.com, was 4.1 in 1967, 4.6 in ’68, 5.7 in ’69 and 4.6 in ’70. His win-probability-added (WPA) led the league in 1968 (5.9) and ’70 (7.5).
Not surprisingly, Howard was named to the A.L. All-Star team as a starting outfielder three times (1968-70) and as a reserve in 1971. He homered in the ’69 game, which was played before adoring fans at RFK.
Howard last played in the majors for the Tigers in 1973, where was reunited with his buddy and longtime Nats teammate Ed Brinkman. After a brief stint in Japan in 1974, he moved moved on to coaching and managing -- the Padres and the Mets -- and then scouting before retiring.
Outside Nationals Park today, three statues pay tribute to Washington baseball greats: Walter Johnson of the first A.L. Senators, Josh Gibson of the Homestead Grays, who played their home games in D.C. in the 1940s, and Frank Howard, baseball’s premier slugger from 1967 to 1971.
Andrew Sharp is a retired daily newspaper journalist, a SABR member and lifelong Washington baseball fan. He blogs about D.C. baseball at washingtonbaseballhistory.com
Cleaning Up
And Then There Were Five
By Dan Schlossberg
Entering the all-wild card World Series of 2023, the Texas Rangers were one of six teams that had never won a world championship.
Not any more.
They made quick work of the Arizona Diamondbacks, a team that barely squeezed into the playoffs, then knocked out the Milwaukee Brewers and Los Angeles Dodgers in convincing fashion, winning four of five games including all three on the road at Chase Field.
Once known as the second-edition Washington Senators (circa 1961), the team became the Texas Rangers in 1972. They then won consecutive pennants in 2010-11 but fell in the Fall Classic that followed.
Their win leaves five franchises without a world title: the Brewers, Padres, Mariners, Rockies, and Rays.
Milwaukee, along with San Diego, now have the longest championship drought — none in their 55-year histories — while the long-established Guardians (nee Indians) have been without one since 1948 (75 years).
Two years after losing 102 games, the Rangers tried to buy their way back into contention, adding free agents Corey Seager, Marcus Semien, and Nathan Eovaldi, plus trade deadline acquisitions Max Scherzer and Jordan Montgomery.
Seager was World Series MVP for the second time — see 2020 Dodgers — with three homers and six runs batted in over five games. He scored in all four Texas wins.
During the regular season, the Rangers finished 90-72, tying the Astros for best in the West but losing the divisional crown because they lost the season series to Houston. he shortstop hit .318 in the 2023 postseason, while Adolis Garcia topped the team with eight home runs and 22 runs batted in even though he missed the last two games of the World Series with an oblique strain. He was MVP of the ALCS.
Eovaldi, who worked six scoreless innings of the finale, went 5-0 and 2.95 in the four series, while Montgomery crafted a 2.90 ERA over five starts and one bullpen outing.
Television ratings tanked, though, because FOX once again insisted it was a good idea to start game after 8:00 EDT. With longer commerical time between innings, many of the games lasted more than three hours, ending after most East Coast viewers (including me) had gone to bed. That’s bad news for a game that badly needs young fans to catch all the action.
Memo to FOX: nobody cares about your boring pre-game show — especially when contrasted with the exciting endings of the games. That’s especially true on weekends, when there is no good reason not to play day games, as baseball did for most of its history.
In closing, congratulations to Bruce Bochy, a world champion for the fourth time, and to the Texas Rangers, winning for the first time. The oldest manager in the game at 68, he’ll be around at least two more years.
Former AP sportswriter Dan Schlossberg of Fair Lawn, NJ covers the game for forbes.com, Memories & Dreams, Sports Collectors Digest, USA TODAY Sports Weekly, and many other outlets. He’s at ballauthor@gmail.com.
Timeless Trivia
“I am getting a little bit older. I believe I can pitch at a lower velocity and reach back and get something else when needed. That is something I have to look into.”
— Injured Rangers pitcher Jacob deGrom, whose 32 starts over the last three years were the same number Zack Wheeler produced this season.
After signing a six-year, $185 million deal to jump from the Mets to the Rangers, deGrom managed only six starts, none after April 28 against the Yankees . . .
At age 35, deGrom has only 84 career victories — far from the Hall of Fame future he envisioned . . .
When his third child was born in June, deGrom and his wife named him Nolan — not necessarily because of Nolan Ryan’s legacy in Texas . . .
The right-handed power pitcher lost the second half of 2021 with elbow inflammation and a stress reaction in the scapula that wiped out the first half of 2022, followed by his second Tommy John elbow surgery earlier this year . . .
His projected return date is next August.
Know Your Editors
HERE’S THE PITCH is published daily except Sundays and holidays. Benjamin Chase [gopherben@gmail.com] handles Monday and Tuesday editions, Elizabeth Muratore [nymfan97@gmail.com] does Wednesday and Thursday, and Dan Schlossberg [ballauthor@gmail.com] edits the weekend editions on Friday and Saturday. Readers are encouraged to contribute comments, articles, and letters to the editor. HTP reserves the right to edit for brevity, clarity, and good taste.