On the other hand, Howard had a 171 OPS+ in 68 and that went up to "only" 178 in 69 even with the walks and was back at 170 in 1970 with a league-leading 132 BB. Also that 54 BB in 663 PA was among the worst of his career to that point. So some of that apparent improvement was just getting out of the year of the pitcher into a couple of better offense years (still far from sillyball).

Or to put it numerically, his lg slash stats for 68 to 70:

234/302/346
247/323/373
252/325/385

His OPS went up 86 points from 68 to 69 but the league's went up nearly 50 so it wasn't that big of an improvement. His walks did go up a lot more than the league's but his ISO held steady while the league's went up. In 70, his ISO went down while the league ISO increased again.

So Williams certainly impacted the walk rate but, in OPS+ terms Howard was the same guy before and after and in Rbat terms he was much better in 69 but in 70 was the same guy as 68. A sizable chunk of Howard's "improvement" was league context.

“When I was 14,” he recalled, “I worked a hundred-pound jackhammer in the streets for the city of Columbus, got paid maybe a dollar and a half an hour and was glad to get it.”

"We didn't have much money, so on the walk home from work I would grab a cow from a farmers field, strangle it and carry it home for dinner", Frank said.

My enduring image of Frank Howard is as a Devil Rays' coach in the late 1990s. You know how some catchers (Johnny Bench was famous for it) have a stunt where they'll hold six or eight baseballs in one hand. I remember seeing Howard wandering the diamond during practice with a fungo bat, with eight baseballs stuffed in his back pocket. He is a large individual.

Teh Original Fear

Why did Barry Bonds explode in his HR totals.
1) Bonds changed his approach and started taking a lot more pitches, and instead swung for the cove at pitches in his zone.
2) Bonds wore body armor, allowing him (and Biggio) to dig in.
3) The average baseball was tighter.
4) Probably played more games because of recovery qualities of PEDs.

1-3 were the most important.

Sosa exploded when he started taking pitches for the first time.

I, a teenager in Arlington, VA, was a fan of the Senators.
At the time, the more obvious Williams project was Mike Epstein.
When he connected Epstein hit the ball harder and longer than Hondo.

1968 13 HR, 48 BB, .234/.338/.366
1969 30 HR, 85 BB, .278/.414/.551

Team
1968 124 HR, 489 BB, .224/.287/.336
1969 138 HR, 583 BB, .238/.321/.358

Hmm, Team +94 BB, Howard +48, Epstein +37.

IIRC, 1969 is the year the mounds were lowered, plus the Pilots and the Royals started playing.

I still remember the Frank Howard stories Ron Luciano told in his book from when I was a kid. Evidently Howard was a peaceable guy and never argued with the umps until one day he lost his temper after a bad strike call and it scared the crap out of everyone. Also, evidently, he single-handedly stopped a riot during a game in the Winter Leagues. I have no idea if that's apocryphal or not. I can't remember ever reading a bad word about the guy though I'm too young to have seen him play.

Bonds changed his approach and started taking a lot more pitches, and instead swung for the cove at pitches in his zone.

I don't think that's quite right for Bonds. He was already an extremely selective power hitter before 2001. Much of the walk increase he saw was due to intentional walks. I don't think Barry had much room to improve in selectivity. In his case the extra walks are a result, not cause of, his increase in power.

What I find interesting about Bonds is that he is alone among the steroid suspects who had power surges, in that he decreased his strikeout rate after the power surge. That tells me that whatever role PEDS played, there was a lot more going on. I think it would be fascinating if Barry ever decided to come clean (not on steroids, for legal reasons he can never do this) on his entire approach to hitting, detailing the improvements he made over the years and everything he learned. He might be able to write the new Science of Hitting. I hope he does this some day.

Though perhaps it's not something he can articulate or teach. Some players have mentioned how sitting next to Bonds on the bench he could call the pitch type before it was delivered with uncanny accuracy. As a result later in his career it was impossible to fool him. That's probably superior pattern recognition skills trained by thousands of plate appearances.

I'm too young to have seen him play (or at least to remember it if I saw him as a toddler). I first saw him coaching for the Mets in the 1980's. The size differential was pretty much the same as it was between my little league coaches and us 12 year old players. Which was fitting since the pre-1984 Mets played like little leaguers.

What I find interesting about Bonds is that he is alone among the steroid suspects who had power surges, in that he decreased his strikeout rate after the power surge. That tells me that whatever role PEDS played, there was a lot more going on. I think it would be fascinating if Barry ever decided to come clean (not on steroids, for legal reasons he can never do this) on his entire approach to hitting, detailing the improvements he made over the years and everything he learned. He might be able to write the new Science of Hitting. I hope he does this some day.

Me, too. Of course, I think he's a genius when it comes to hitting and I hope the A's or Giants hire him as a hitting instructor one day.

frank howard was a coach for the brewers for a long time and here are the enduring traits of frank howard

--really nice guy
--strong as h8ll
--those glasses always amused me
--always spoke with his hand on your shoulder
--liked a good joke
--loved taking bp with the team in fenway and would always talk about how much he would have loved it as his home ballpark

folks here likely remember rob deer. rob was a big, burly fella. shoulders a mile wide. so there was a game where deer got hit by a pitch and he's barking at the pitcher and the pitcher gestures like 'c'mon tough guy' and deer standing on first starts to go and howard grabs him by the collar and just picks him up one handed and then wraps him up with his toes not touching.

this was 1986ish or so so frank was what, 51?

it was both amazing and hilarious to see this clearly strong guy get manhandled by an older but clearly just as strong (maybe stronger) guy.

Thanks Repoz for this thread, and for those who RTFA(s). (By the way, anyone who wants to write articles like this, let me know. We have 2200 biographies done, but still need about 15,000 or so. Roger Repoz is still available.)

This pair of bios (Howard and McCovey) are interesting for men of certain age (my age) because they both peaked at roughly the same time and were the two most feared hitters in their respective leagues. In McCovey's case, the proof is his record-breaking intentional walk totals, which included walks at unusual times--first base not open, very early in the game, etc. In Howard's case, the most humorous examples were the two times that Al Dark moved Sam McDowell to another position so that he would not have to face Howard, and then moved him back to finish the game.

Also, they were both platooned in the early 1960s for several years. Howard was not the hitter that McCovey was, but he was pretty good.

Great article, Mark. Just one minor point - Bob Short did not sell the Rangers until 1974. He owned the team when it moved, and he received several years of media revenue up front.

Maybe the hardest (or second hardest--Mantle had one, too) ball I ever saw hit that wasn't a homer was a line drive Frank Howard sent back through the middle. A real Clint Eastwood special--had it hit the pitcher flush in the face it would have "taken his head clean off."

hold six or eight baseballs in one hand.

I keep several baseballs, with various team logos, on my desk. Let's see, now...one, two, three...three. Barely. (I'm so ashamed.)

For the record, the balls are from the Adirondack Lumberjacks, New Jersey Cardinals, and Sussex Skyhawks...all defunct. Hm.

Obviously the main reason for the change in Howard's stats in 1969 was that the strike zone was returned to its 1962 size. As Walt Davis noted, he didn't improve much relative to the league.

#15 Brooks Robinson said that the hardest hit ball he ever faced came from a Howard liner. I remember his description as being something close to: I reached for it, just missed and heard it thump the wall just after. Said it would have torn his arm off if he'd actually got a glove on it.

Thanks, Osuna, I have changed the story.

Howard was as famous as anyone of the time, or any time, for hitting massively long home runs. If there was a game played on TV in the American League park, inevitably one of the announcers would show the place where Howard hit a ball ... onto the roof at Tiger Stadium or Comiskey Park or KC's Municipal Stadium.

McCovey, on the other hand, was more famous for hitting laser beam line drives. Even his home runs were most typically line drives that did not come down. The literature of the period is filled with stories of first baseman who were afraid of McCovey at bats.

This division is not perfect. It was Howard who most famously hurt a base runner. Duke Snider, a baserunner on third base, was hit by a Howard foul ball in the head. He was carried off on a stretcher and missed the rest of the season. (It was in September 1958.)

I surprised Treder hasn't shown up yet and defended Williams and his coaching ability.

Maybe the hardest (or second hardest--Mantle had one, too) ball I ever saw hit that wasn't a homer was a line drive Frank Howard sent back through the middle. A real Clint Eastwood special--had it hit the pitcher flush in the face it would have "taken his head clean off."

I seem to recall that Whitey Ford ducked when Howard lined a double to center in the 1963 WS - a 460' screamer to the base of the wall behind the monuments at YS. Also saw Howard hit a 400' out to right-center in the old Polo Grounds (Memorial Day 1962) that never got nearly as high as our 1st-row upper deck seats above the Dodger bullpen in left-center. The Met's RF was playing so deep he merely took a step or two back and grabbed it. And I'd put Mantle 1st, too, for his 1963 shot off the facade that some said was still rising when it hit.

There's a section in Whitey Ford's biography that tells an interesting complementary story to this. Apparently Whitey was always afraid of facing Howard because of some giant home run Howard hit off of him in spring training 1963 or whatever and figured that if Howard ever hit a liner back at him he was finished, so when he pitched to him he'd always throw then duck and cover. Then at some point he realized Howard was an incredibly anxious hitter and started pitching him in the dirt, never throwing a strike, and having much more success.

EDIT: Coke.

I think it would be fascinating if Barry ever decided to come clean (not on steroids, for legal reasons he can never do this)

Surely there will come a time where he can come clean and not have any legal concerns. Am I right lawyers out there?

#20 Why? Specifically with Howard he got an improvement that was less impressive than first glance once you account for league context.

Even allowing for changed offensive context his record for short term success is better than anybody that I can think of.

On the other hand, I can't think of any of his projects who sustained their improved offensive level. Eddy Brinkman was back to being Brinkman (yeah new team) by 1971 and that's typical of everybody who worked with Williams.

Treder was a big believer of Williams as the improvement to Washington's hitters. I can't find the old debates but he would bristle at the suggestion that Williams wasn't the main reason for the increase in production.

#23 I think we'll get a practical example with Lance Armstrong. There are now demands for him to repeat what he's said to Oprah (not aired yet) under oath.

I know some of the people Armstrong successfully sued are trying to get their money back. No idea how that'll work out. (Armstrong basically only went the legal route in Europe where slander and libel laws work very differently for celebs than in the US. Sued frequently and won a fair number of cases. And always passed the winnings on to charity. Making the point that it wasn't about the money.)

Obviously the main reason for the change in Howard's stats in 1969 was that the strike zone was returned to its 1962 size. As Walt Davis noted, he didn't improve much relative to the league.

Why is it obvious? The league BB rate increased from .081 to .095 in 1969 (a 17% bump). Howard's rate increased from .081 to .145 (a 79% bump). Howard's career was a series of adjustments and counter-adjustments (both by him and the pitchers), but this was a big one. The best year he had ever had for walk rate, relative to the league, was in 1964 when he was often platooning (a big factor, obviously), but 1969 was, by a long shot, his best to date. And it went up quite a bit in 1970 as well.

#23 I think we'll get a practical example with Lance Armstrong. There are now demands for him to repeat what he's said to Oprah (not aired yet) under oath.

I know some of the people Armstrong successfully sued are trying to get their money back. No idea how that'll work out. (Armstrong basically only went the legal route in Europe where slander and libel laws work very differently for celebs than in the US. Sued frequently and won a fair number of cases. And always passed the winnings on to charity. Making the point that it wasn't about the money.)

But Bonds hasn't sued anybody, nor has he been sued (at least not where steroids had any kind of role). He didn't kill anyone, so there's got to be some statute of limitations on the criminal side. I just can't see how he's going to be forever hidebound to secrecy on the subject of juicing.

- coke -

#25 Sure. He and I went into it in pretty fair detail. What it boils down to is that a good chunk of hitters had very good seasons by their standards when first working with Williams. It's striking the number who had career years under him.

But nobody sustained it, and he wasn't a god of hitting instruction. Couldn't teach (for instance) Tim Cullen to hit. Likewise Paul Casanova.

And the last team he managed was stunningly bad offensively. Team OPS+ of 77. What's more, a couple of young players had big improvement after Williams left. By that point Williams had basically lost the ability to work with anybody. And a few players formed the "underminers club". They really wanted him gone.

hold six or eight baseballs in one hand.

I keep several baseballs, with various team logos, on my desk. Let's see, now...one, two, three...three. Barely. (I'm so ashamed.)

For the record, the balls are from the Adirondack Lumberjacks, New Jersey Cardinals, and Sussex Skyhawks...all defunct. Hm.

I have a coffee table book with a picture of Ernie Lombardi holding 7 baseballs.

In considering whether Williams had a positive effect on Howard, isn't that to some degree indeterminable because you can't account for the natural decrease in production due to age? How do you factor that in? Even it's true that he got no better, how do you know that without the Williams effect he wouldn't have gotten worse?

Also, really, did Williams have to be around in an official hands-on capacity to have an influence on hitting? It may be even indirectly through someone else He's the most influential "philosopher" of hitting in the last 70 years--well, maybe ever. Right now, and for a long time, it's the conventional wisdom (it's where you start at least) for almost anyone who is a serious student of hitting.

Why is it obvious? The league BB rate increased from .081 to .095 in 1969 (a 17% bump).

It would be interesting to figure how much of that increase was due to the increased walks drawn by the Senators alone. It's a bit tricky to figure because of the two additional teams, and I don't have time to do it right now, but I do note that the Senators isolated walk rate went from well below the league average in 1968 to well above it in 1969.

ted was a positive thinker. that can have a powerful impact on the right people

with the 1969 senators i think you had the league changes working to some players advantages, some guys open to the managers' message and a manager who had very clear ideas of what he wanted to do and players willing to listen

even if you have a plan that long term is not much of plan when everyone before you has had no plan at all you look like a goodd8mn genius

Howard was as famous as anyone of the time, or any time, for hitting massively long home runs. If there was a game played on TV in the American League park, inevitably one of the announcers would show the place where Howard hit a ball ... onto the roof at Tiger Stadium or Comiskey Park or KC's Municipal Stadium.

If you've ever been to RFK, you know that in certain sections of the completely circular stand where the seats go way, way, way up (and there's usually one guy sitting at the top of them, 60 rows at least from another human being). There are a couple seats painted white marking his bombs that are just impossibly far out there. Most home runs at RFK don't even hit the back wall.

it was both amazing and hilarious to see this clearly strong guy get manhandled by an older but clearly just as strong (maybe stronger) guy.

I would love to see a video of that.

I just can't see how he's going to be forever hidebound to secrecy on the subject of juicing.

I shouldn't say never. When he's in his 80s and the public perception of him has changed from complete A-hole to revered elder statesman* he should be able to speak freely. I don't know what the statutes of limitation are for perjury, but for the next 14 years at least he's not going to admit to anything that will further hurt his HOF chances. And at this point any theory that you can confess and be forgiven has been proven to be false.

*Hey, this worked for Ted Williams, didn't it?

There are a couple seats painted white marking his bombs that are just impossibly far out there. Most home runs at RFK don't even hit the back wall.

That is just unreal. As Ted said "I think without question the biggest, strongest guy who ever played this game". I wonder if this is still true. His competition would probably be:

Mark McGwire
Bo Jackson
Giancarlo Stanton (for whom we probably have not seen his peak strength).

I'm sure at some point in his life Frank had to have worked out with weights, but did he continue to do it during his MLB playing days? Most, if not all, players then didn't.

*Hey, this worked for Ted Williams, didn't it?

Pretty much. During his playing days, I figured Bonds would enjoy a similar transformation as The Kid, though the whole juicing issue may delay that.

I met Howard in 2009 when the SABR conference was in DC. He is an enormous man--he was listed at 6'7" when he played but people often said he was taller and I agree. He was in great shape--no retirement fat at all--but he was huge, especially his upper body. Huge hands, huge shoulders, huge arms. I would love to see him arm wrestle someone even today.

I was at RFK in 2005 and the three of us made a point to go find the white seats after the game. The ushers really did not want us going out there--they were trying to get us to go home and we had to essentially pretend we did not hear. I sat in one of the seats and looked toward home plate which I could barely see. Center field seemed to me to be 200 feet away.

I always have to interject when someone says Williams was a complete a-hole, whether it's Bill James in the NHBA or others, that that does not meet the facts. Unlike Bonds, Williams was personable and was well-liked by many when he was playing. Doerr, Pesky, Dom DiMaggio (hell, see photos of Williams and DiMaggio tousling each other's hair). If you're dislike to the extent wome would have it, you don't have Branch Rickey calling you when you return from Korea to urge you to return to playing right away. You don't have the commissioner of baseball personally calling you to ask you to throw out the first pitch at the All Star game (to how many players still playing has that happened to?). You don't have a Mudcat Grant praising you for being one of the few white players to stand up for you--in no uncertain terms. He loved talking hitting with players during his playing career, and those other players loved talking to him about it, too, and they are on record as saying so.

I met Howard in 2009 when the SABR conference was in DC. He is an enormous man--he was listed at 6'7" when he played but people often said he was taller and I agree. He was in great shape--no retirement fat at all--but he was huge, especially his upper body. Huge hands, huge shoulders, huge arms. I would love to see him arm wrestle someone even today.

Glad to hear it, because there was a time during his coaching career after he retired from playing that he definitely let himself go. He was fat, probably weighed at least 350 lbs, and with those beltless double-knit skintight stretch uniforms of the late '70s, it wasn't a pretty sight.

Williams was well-liked by his teammates, managers, and everyone else associated with the team. He had long friendships with people that worked in the team offices.

Several members of the press hated him, and vice versa. He could be a dick to them, he later acknowledged. In one of the many books that came out late in his life, he said to the author (paraphrasing from memory): "make sure you put this in your damn book: I was a lousy ****king husband and a lousy ****cking father."

One of the reasons there are so many books about him is that his contradictions are so interesting.

Ed Linn, with whom he feuded, wrote a book about Williams in the 1990s. Comparing him to DiMaggio, he wrote that DiMaggio was a complicated multi-dimensional player and a simple man, while Williams was the reverse.

“Can you tell me how a guy who hit 44 home runs only got 48 walks?” asked Williams.

Maybe the hardest (or second hardest--Mantle had one, too) ball I ever saw hit that wasn't a homer was a line drive Frank Howard sent back through the middle. A real Clint Eastwood special--had it hit the pitcher flush in the face it would have "taken his head clean off."

The way I had always heard it was that Williams basically explained to Howard "Every pitcher in the league is terrified that you'll kill him. Use that to your advantage. Nobody wants to throw you fastballs down the middle, ok? So if they're throwing you stuff off the plate, don't swing at that sh**. Get some good counts and then make them throw you your pitch."

For some even better insights into what it was like to receive personal hitting tutelage from Williams, read "YAZ", Carl Yastrzemski's 1968 autobiography. In it he covers several things:

1)Ted always maintained that anyone could hit for more power without sacrificing any batting average. A big part of it is knowing how to create situations for yourself when you can swing from the heels (i.e., work those good counts, especially when there are runners on base).

2)Yaz said that Ted always emphasized that hitting for average is actually a basic batting skill but learning how to pull the ball for power is an advanced skill. Thus, work on being able to hit for good averages first (especially how to hit with two strikes on you) before you work on increasing power output. After Yaz won the 1963 A.L. batting title and finished second in 1965, apparently Ted thought Yaz was ready for some advanced training.

3)As far as hitting mechanics, Ted always told Yaz "hips ahead of hands" - open your hips up on your stride as that will pull the bat through the zone quicker/harder.

4)"Know your pitch". Yaz said that at first he thought that meant "know what pitch I like to hit" but then Ted explained to him "If the pitcher knows you're a dead low fastball hitter, he's not going to throw you low fastballs. It would be suicidal." "Know your pitch" means learn what the pitcher throws in certain situations. If you can get to the point where you can predict what pitch is coming, that is still to the batter's advantage even if you know it's not necessarily the pitch you want to see.

Tony Gwynn has also talked extensively about his conversations with Ted during the winter before the 1997 season. In 1997 Tony had his career highs in both HRs and 2Bs and he attributed both to Williams as follows:

1)Tony was always so polite he would refer to Ted as "Mr. Williams", and Ted would call Tony "son". Ted would say "Son, history is made on the pitch inside". According to Tony, Ted worked with him on getting good situations to look for fastballs on the inside part of the plate as those are the pitches the batter has a good chance to pull for power. Tony used that to hit 13 HRs the first half of the '97 season, way ahead of pace for Tony's normal power output. Then pitchers started going away from Tony more once they realized that he was attacking those inside fastballs.

2)So, according to Tony, Ted had told him this would happen, but - what was Tony's bread and butter his whole career? Going with outside pitches to hit singles through the 5.5 hole, right? Tony said that early in the season he was seeing more inside pitches because he had never been a pull hitter before and pitchers were staying away from Tony's traditional "happy zone". But when Tony started hitting some homers, then pitchers started consciously keeping the ball away from Tony, which fed into his natural style of hitting. Tony said the pull hitting increased both HRs and some doubles, but he also said a lot of doubles that season came on those pitches he could go the other way with.

When Tony turned on an inside pitch in Game 1 of the '98 WS against the Yankees for a HR in Yankee Stadium, he said that was classic Ted Williams training on that AB.

Of course, I'm not sure what Ted would have done with Mike Piazza. Most of Mike's career, all his homers were going to the opposite field so he wasn't pulling the ball at all.

Something else I just thought of - I believe (per the "Home Run Encyclopedia")that 286 of Ted's 521 career HRs came with runners on base (about 55%). I think that is the highest % of anyone who ever had at least 400 career HRs. Can anyone verify this relatively easily?

45:

Great recap of Williams's approach to hitting and his hitting philosophy.

#44:

That nicely puts it in a nutshell.

I'd also add that Mantle, too, wasn't simply the a-hole that many revisionists now would have him be. Former teammates of Mantle cried when they spoke of Mickey. That can't be if he was nothing but an ass hole.

There's a section in Whitey Ford's biography that tells an interesting complementary story to this. Apparently Whitey was always afraid of facing Howard because of some giant home run Howard hit off of him in spring training 1963 or whatever and figured that if Howard ever hit a liner back at him he was finished, so when he pitched to him he'd always throw then duck and cover. Then at some point he realized Howard was an incredibly anxious hitter and started pitching him in the dirt, never throwing a strike, and having much more success.

Tracer!

Howard vs. Ford:
1963 (World Series) - 3 for 6 with a home run
1965 - 4 for 8 with a home run (and a walk)
1966 - 2 for 4 with a home run (and an IBB)

Ford never struck Howard out or got him to GIDP.

I'd also add that Mantle, too, wasn't simply the a-hole that many revisionists now would have him be. Former teammates of Mantle cried when they spoke of Mickey. That can't be if he was nothing but an ass hole.

I have no idea whether Mantle was a jerk or not, but time and cognitive dissonance have a way of changing one's feeling about the past regardless of how they felt at the time. Besides, isn't what people mostly say about Mantle isn't so much that he was a jerk but that he was a famous guy with a massive drinking problem?

#45 is one of those posts that singlehandedly justifies the existence of Primer. God I love reading about stuff like that. Well done, Moeball.