Howard heads back to Triple-A
PHILADELPHIA >> If Spencer Howard proved anything during his latest callup, it was that — barring a miracle — he is not the next Phillies ace.
Cole Hamels, no. Tyler Green, maybe. Right now, Howard is a less developed Vince Velasquez. More sizzle than substance. Somebody who throws hard and has some strikeout numbers but no one you can trust to win games regularly.
The Phillies optioned Howard to Triple-A Lehigh Valley Tuesday. They used the roster space to activate second baseman Jean Segura, who was a sparkplug before injuring his groin. In the first first inning of his return Tuesday, Segura scored the Phils’ first run.
Howard drove back to Allentown with an 0-2 record and a 5.82 ERA in 21.2 innings, having allowed 18 hits, 14 earned runs and 16 walks. It’s hard to argue over 27 strikeouts. All of that essentially was accomplished in the first two or three innings of his starts because Joe Girardi and the Phillies’ coaching staff clearly knew when he was about to blow up and yanked him accordingly.
You can read pitchers like Howard the same as the temperature gauge on an automobile: Normal then hot, turn the ignition off and call for the other AAA.
Howard is that sleek import that always, always throws another trouble code at you once you get it back from the mechanic.
After a few minutes with Girardi before the Phils opposed the Miami Marlins Monday night at Citizens Bank Park it was a matter of when, not if Howard, would be sent back to the minors.
Though the goal for Howard is to get back to the Phillies ASAP, there are a lot of pieces to pick up, work to be done and confidence to be regained, in as much as that is possible. Don’t look for that to happen before his 25th
birthday next month.
For starters, the big question is why the 6-3, 210-pound Howard is so good the first time through the opposing lineup and so vulnerable the second time around.
“We’ve seen loss of velocity,” Girardi said. “We’ve seen secondary pitches that are issues at times. Those are probably the two main things. We’ve seen some other things. It’s just who he is right now. And we’re trying to correct it every day.”
The secondary pitches are the offspeed stuff Howard cannot seem to throw for strikes. As Howard so eloquently put it, “You can bully your way through a lineup with your fastball. The second time through, you need your off-speed pitches.”
It sure didn’t sound like it was Girardi’s idea to develop Howard this way. Seemed to be a collective effort that began when the Phillies lost such back-end of the rotation guys as Chase Anderson and Matt Moore to injury.
“Sometimes we do things because we need someone to fill a spot,” Girardi said. “Sometimes somebody goes down, and we need to call up a young player that maybe is not completely finished, in a sense. We’ve had to call up a lot of infielders, kids like (Nick) Maton, (Luke) Williams. They’ve been pressed into action, and they’ve done a pretty good job for us but sometimes it’s earlier than what you expect. Need plays (a role) in part of our decisions, too.”
The plan for Howard is to work on his pitches and throw a lot more innings than he has in the bigs, building him back up to a more starter-appropriate workload.
“There’s no timeline or anything,” Howard said. “They said ‘we see you as a starter,’ and they want me to build as one. … I’d say the last year and a half mechanics-wise I haven’t felt myself. Go back to Lehigh, get on a normal schedule starting. Just continue to pound off-speeds in the zone. Try to get back and dialed in and play better.”
It’s hard to envision Howard as the fourth starter the Phillies need when Zack Wheeler, Aaron Nola or Zach Eflin aren’t on the bump. Not the way he blew up against the Reds Monday.
“He was a young pitcher when he got called up,” Girardi said. “We had a strange year last year. He’s not a guy that’s ever logged 150 innings in the minor leagues just because he moved fairly quickly.”
The fourth pitcher in the Phillies’ rotation now is Velasquez, out of necessity. With Howard sent on his way, Velasquez Monday pitched into the seventh inning for the first time this season and elevated his record to 3-2. He’d reached the sixth just twice, once in a win over the Marlins.
Velasquez threw seven shutout innings, striking out seven, allowing just two hits and not issuing a walk in what morphed into a 4-3 victory over the Marlins.
When Howard isn’t working on his off-speed stuff, he ought to track the starts of Velasquez. After a solid first season, one in which he struck out 16 Padres in a game, it’s taken him five years to get back there.