The reason the numbers are leveling off is because the fundementals are being excused when a guy has raw skills. You take Ryan Howard and he toned himself better physically this year but mos of his poor play this year was down to mental errors which takes all that power and uses it against him. Smart pitchers owned him most of the time because they clearly studied what they were up against and how to make him beat himself by making him swing for the fence on bad pitches, you don’t go under the mendoza line with no-body on yet wrack up the longballs in that situation which proves power hitting is sometimes no more effective than smallball. The reason guys like Pujols (and I hate to say but it’s true Manny) are so good is their not swinging for the fences, their looking for their pitch and rarely will they be outright fooled because they don’t give the opposing pitchers a book on their weaknesses.

The numbers are leveling off because we hold guys like Ryan Howard up and say your an MVP instead of saying you had a great September, you could be a first ballot half of famer but unless you put more work in and become a scholar at hitting you’ll end up boucing around after that mega deal goes sour because everyone can already see your struggling through the majoriy of ABs. We critisize Howards defense which are almost always undisciplined errors yet he’s doing the same thing in most of his at bats swinging at bad pitches or getting fooled by room service fastballs when he’s not even in pitchers counts because he’s regressing as an all-around hitter. You look at Pujols and you see a future 1st ballot HOFer because you see a guy dedicated to sudying the game instead of trying coast on talent.

(Might not be all the info your looking for but: http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/players/splits?playerId=5383)

And is the problem with power confined to the Phillies? I do not know, but I don’t think so. Strikeouts have increased every year, as power numbers have leveled off. That’s in both leagues.

As I said I hope Mayberry has the right guys around him to make him into a ballplayer not just a fastball or hanging breaking ball slugger.

(Outside of Utley) in the big money games, teams weren’t respecting the Phils power bats because they knew how streaky the team was and the Phils often became predictable on the basepaths which diminished the effectiveness in the running game at times. You add more speed or power and your just adding more frustration, more escapes for the opposing pitcher when it should have been a crooked inning. We add a couple of guys with less ability but the right intagables and we’ll breed a fire into this team no-one’s really seen before and then the power will be deadly. The Phils are so tuned to being explosive and making the opposing team fear the longball they often struggle to just have good ABs. There was bitching and moaning when we let Rowand go because of the veteran leadership, yet we still want more speed and more power when there’s plenty to go around if the bats don’t force themselves into such prolonged slumps trying to find that power that’s always talked about. What I like about Donald is this guy sounds like he has intangables, hustle, knows how to get his average up by doing 1 thing right when everything else is going wrong and we need more of that, can that be said for Howard who’s meant to be the core of the power? Can that be said for Utley, yes because when he’s not getting extra-base hits most of the time he’ll find some way to impact the game. Pedroia won the MVP because he did that and all withouth ‘power’ because wherever he was put whatever the resulthe adjusted to what he needed to do in that situation instead of trying to go long.

Some how the Phils battled through to be World Champions in an overall poor season playing poorly overall in the world series, fill the vacant spots with guys with some fight and then we’ll have a team you can never bet against. Is Mayberry the guy? I don’t know but from now he’s our guy and I just hope he’s surrounded with players that say how can you help the team right now, not click you heels three times and swing for the fences.

Power means nothing without purpose.

Thats not a team lacking power.

At this point, I don’t have a clue because on one hand, this may be an upgrade in terms of power down the road, but on the other hand, we kind of need power NOW because we’ve got a void in the middle of our lineup now with Utley being hurt because his minimum recovery time would take until the end of spring training, so who knows how long it would take for him to get back into the swing of things (no pun intended). He might not be really back into baseball shape until June, even if he does start on opening day.

But who’s going to play right field? Mayberry? Maybe later, but we need someone now. The thing is, every power outfielder is a greater risk than reward. Ibanez is a) 36 and b) left-handed, which would give us THREE left-handed corner outfielders. Milton Bradley is only 30, but he has anger issues AND he tore his ACL in September 2007 when he was with the Padres. He missed over 30 games, and he only played 20 in the outfield – who knows how his knees would hold up over the course of the season?

And just because he couldn’t break into Texas’ outfield doesn’t mean he isn’t any good. They’ve got Josh Hamilton and some other good players…and by the way, did anyone else see that Marlon Byrd plays for the Rangers now…and hit .298 with 10 HR, 53 RBI, and slugged .462? Over 122 games. Figures that would happen.

Golson, with another year of minor league development, will be pretty good

AND… Geoff Jenkins doesn’t start

We are getting another young outfielder in return, one that can play either corner OF spot.. and has power in his bat..

I like Golson a lot, but I can’t agree with saying that we sold-low on him, or could have gotten more..