Howard’s numbers might not add up

This has been the Year of the Big, Round Number. By the time Tom Glavine wins his 300th game, perhaps as soon as the end of this month, the 2007 season will have witnessed the Triple Crown of milestones – 3,000 hits (Craig Biggio), 600 homers (Sammy Sosa) and 300 wins.

And then there is the burgeoning membership drive for the 500-home run club. Between 1987 and 1996, not a single player joined its exclusive ranks, but this year could see as many as five new members (Frank Thomas, who is already in, plus Alex Rodriguez, Jim Thome, Manny Ramirez and Gary Sheffield).

Still, one of the more fascinating and potentially significant big-round-number moments this season went virtually unnoticed. On June 27, Ryan Howard of the Philadelphia Phillies hit his 100th career homer. Whup-dee-do, right? Except that Howard reached his 100th homer faster than anyone in history – in his 325th game, beating Ralph Kiner’s 59-year-old record by 60 games.

By comparison, Barry Bonds, the heir apparent to Hank Aaron’s all-time home run record, needed 640 games to reach 100, while Alex Rodriguez, the heir apparent to the heir apparent, needed 470.

So is Ryan Howard the heir apparent to the heir apparent to the heir apparent? Only if he plays as long as Bonds and stays as productive. Howard’s problem is age – he spent three years in college, then found himself stuck behind Jim Thome in Philadelphia, all of which delayed his big league debut until he was 24 years 9 months old. By the time he became a regular he was 25 years 8 months old.

That means he was roughly 5 1/2 years older than Aaron, almost five years older than Rodriguez and almost four years older than Bonds when they became regulars.

If Howard, now 27, keeps up his current pace (or 100 homers every 325 games), it would take him a total of 2,600 games to hit 800 (which is a conservative estimate of what the all-time record might be by the time Bonds and Rodriguez are done). That comes out to roughly 16 1/4 seasons of 160 games.

In other words, Howard would need to play into his early 40s and remain as productive a player as he is now – a difficult thing to fathom, Bonds’s historically unprecedented career trajectory notwithstanding.