Yanick (NY): Who would you rather employ at 1B: Ryan Howard or Carlos Pena?

Joe Sheehan: Pena. There’s a lot of runs of defense between the two, and even this year, 40 points of OBP. It’s close, but I’ll take Pena.

Derek Jacques (7:25:08 PM PT): “Jon (SF): Do you think that with the national exposure the Phillies are getting, people will finally realize that Utley, and not Howard or Rollins is the best player on the team?”

The announcers themselves seem dumbfounded by this, and a good handful of games by Howard against the Rays’ righthanders could reinforce the misperception, but Utley did a nice job of introducing himself to America in the first.

“Ryan Howard can’t hit lefties and he’s a poor defensive first baseman. The day either of these things changes, I’ll stop calling him a platoon player and mocking the people who think he’s an MVP candidate.

Honestly. This is where we are as a society. Facts just don’t matter.”

Take from these what you will, I’m not a Howard hater, but his defense IS well below average. I guarantee that if he hits a homer tonight, I will not be bitching about his defense though!

Hamels didn’t get off the mound quickly.. and Iwamura is a quick runner, from the left side .. so he’s already got a 2-3 step head start to 1st base over a Righty… more blame to Hamels than Howard there.. but sometimes guys just get infield hits, no big deal..

He should have made that play on the hard-hit ball, but that wasn’t as bad as Pena not catching the throw and getting Burrell out at 1st.. Howard made a very nice catch on the ball in the stands, a good throw to Rollins to get Pena on the pickoff, he’s no Texiera, but he’s not as bad as people want to believe

The first inning where Howard and Hamels didn’t get the runner, which I believe was Hamel’s fault, primarily because he fell more towards 3rd base following through on his pitch and was off balance, therefore being late to the bag.

Forget the inning, but a pretty hard hit ground ball hit to Howard that he should have handled, but bobbled.

Now the only reason I guess you could say I’m “calling you out” on this, is because I’ve seen Howard make some pretty nice plays this postseason, for example, that grab from in the stands.

I know Howard isn’t the best, trust me, but is he really that big of a liability at 1st?

(Just had to blurt that out to relieve the tension)

MVP??

All that said……..I need to weigh in on the Howard thing…..
Howard is NOT the worst first baseman in history! It’s just that when he struggles at the plate people jump all over his defense too. Yeah, he bungled that one play last night and because of his hitting (or lack thereof) you all are saying he is terrible first baseman. What about all the good plays he makes? This may seem small……but it’s HUGE……the play where he catches Upton’s pop-up near the rail was not that easy. He doesn’t make that and who knows what Upton does next. Keeping that guy quiet alone last night probably is the difference in the outcome.