Howard and the MVP

I was taking a look at Ryan Howard and his amazing second half tonight in preparation for a chat tomorrow and created the following chart for the Phillies who now stand 2.5 games out in the wild card.



Howard's slugging percentage since the break has been .837. Let me repeat that: eight-thirty-seven. At the break the Phils were 7 games under .500 and were scoring less than 5 runs per game. Since then they've gone 32-24 and have scored just over 6 runs a game. Hard to debate the impact he's had on the team during that time span when they also lost one of their most productive hitters in Bobby Abreu.

Howard is also second in VORP for position players at 74.0 to Travis Hafner's 80.1 making him tops in the NL. Pretty good resume.