Ryan Howard won his arbitration case, and even though they had every right to take it to arbitration, the Phillies just come off looking the way they always do: like cheap bastards. Whether that is fair or not in this case I don’t know, but due to a long running (124 year) history of doing everything on the cheap, they’re gonna come off looking like the bad guys in a situation like this. They paid him a measly $900,000 the year after he won the MVP, and Howard wouldn’t have such a short tenure if they hadn’t been so short sighted and signed Thome. Anyways, we’ve got four seasons of Howard before he moves on to greener pastures (aka teams that don’t pretend like they don’t have any money). So does Howard deserve $10 million? Fans in Philly sure think so. More importantly, I’m glad he won. This will be one less distraction in the coming year.
