Spencer Howard

Spencer Lee Howard (born July 28, 1996) is an American professional baseball pitcher for the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles of Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB). He has previously played in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the Philadelphia Phillies, Texas Rangers, San Francisco Giants, and Cleveland Guardians.

Howard was born in San Luis Obispo and raised in Templeton, California. A multi-sport athlete at Templeton High School, he considered quitting the baseball team to focus on volleyball, but was persuaded to stay by the coach. He received no scholarship offers to play college baseball, but made the Cal Poly Mustangs baseball team after a fall tryout. Howard was a redshirt during his freshman year, taking the season to build his strength and pitch velocity. He further improved his pitching during two seasons of collegiate summer baseball with the Bellingham Bells of the West Coast League, and by his junior year in 2017, Howard served as a starting pitcher for the Mustangs.

The Phillies selected Howard in the second round of the 2017 MLB Draft, and he spent the season with the Low–A Williamsport Crosscutters, working on his pitching mechanics. In 2018, he was assigned to the Single–A Lakewood BlueClaws, with whom he pitched the first postseason no-hitter in franchise history. Howard missed two months of the 2018 season due to a shoulder injury, and played in the Arizona Fall League to make up for the time he missed. After working his way up to Double-A in 2019, Howard was one of several Phillies prospects who began the pandemic-shortened 2020 season at an alternate training site, preparing for a major-league call-up. He made his MLB debut that season, but a recurrence of the shoulder injury limited his output. Since his major league debut, Howard has struggled with maintaining his pitch velocity into the later innings of a game, and in 2021, he was paired with long reliever Ranger Suárez for his scheduled starts. Howard was part of a trading deadline deal in 2021 that sent him to the Rangers in exchange for Kyle Gibson and Ian Kennedy.

Howard uses four pitches on the mound In addition to his staple fastball, which averages around , he alternates a changeup, slider, and curveball as his off-speed pitches. Howard has struggled in the major leagues with maintaining his pitch velocity long into games, an issue that has been traced back to his shoulder injury from 2018. Provided by Wikipedia