Former Phillies Friday: Spencer Howard’s Yankees stint short-lived

Former top prospect Spencer Howard has struggled mightily in his big-league career. (John Jones/Icon Sportswire)

Since he signed with the Phillies in the spring of 2019, Bryce Harper has never shied away from letting the front office know his opinion about the club’s operations. If Harper wants a move to be made, he’ll say so.

That’s why Harper’s words held so much gravity a few days before the shortened 2020 season, when he weighed in on the future of a top Phillies prospect: Spencer Howard.

“If Spencer Howard isn’t starting in our rotation by Game 6 in New York against the New York Yankees,” Harper said during a July 16, 2020 Twitch stream, “there’s a problem. That’s all I’ll say.”

Harper had made it clear: He wanted the Phillies’ No. 2 overall prospect in the big leagues, pronto.

He probably didn’t see Howard’s next three years going like this.

Howard was released by — ironically — the Yankees on Wednesday. The right-hander had been acquired from Texas before the trade deadline after posting an 8.37 ERA across parts of three seasons with the Rangers, and his time in Scranton/Wilkes-Barre with the Yankees’ Triple-A affiliate didn’t go much better: He allowed seven hits and six runs (five earned) in just 2 2/3 frames across three appearances.

Howard was the centerpiece of the 2021 deal that sent Kyle Gibson and Ian Kennedy from the Rangers to the Phillies before that year’s trade deadline. Kennedy had a rocky Phillies tenure, though Gibson provided some value in the back end of the 2022 rotation, particularly in an August that saw him compile a 2.30 ERA before the Phillies eventually broke their 11-year playoff drought.

Gibson had almost no role in the postseason, largely due to a horrid September. But that the Phillies squeaked any value out of Howard is a win in and of itself, because Howard’s Philadelphia tenure was a major disappointment.

Each of his starts seemed to follow a similar pattern: He’d dominate through the first couple innings, but his velocity would take a significant dip around the third, the floodgates would open and things would spiral. Howard and the Phillies never quite knew how to fix the velocity problem, though they had solutions in mind: most famously, an overhauled pregame meal routine, consisting of peanut butter and bananas closer to game time. (It didn’t work.)

Howard spent parts of the 2021 season in Lehigh Valley and Reading, where the velocity issues disappeared. But his Majors stint that season went much like it did in 2020, and if the fanbase hadn’t soured on him yet, blaming his third-inning velocity issues on a jog down to first base the previous half inning was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

The Phillies decided at the deadline that Howard was someone else’s project, and it seemed upon his arrival in Texas that the 6-foot-3 righty was ready to move on as well. He described his Phillies tenure as (brace yourself for this one) “trying to polish a turd”

— essentially, trying to eke what they could out of a flawed Howard in the short-term instead of focusing on his long-term development.

Howard had expressed optimism in the Rangers’ ability to do the opposite — to prioritize the long term and, to stretch the metaphor, flush the righty’s old mechanics and profile as a pitcher down the toilet. Ultimately, it didn’t result in much success for either side, and Howard was moved for the second time in three trade deadlines.

What’s next for Howard is unclear. He’s already 27 years old, and three organizations now have failed to turn his status as a once-upper-tier prospect into a viable big-league pitcher. His next organization will face an uphill battle in trying not to become the fourth.