For Major League Baseball teams, a team’s culture and chemistry is paramount to gutting through the grueling season – and according to World Series champion Ryan Howard, it outweighs a team’s talent.
MLB plays 162 regular-season games in about 180 days, from the end of March until the beginning of October. Spring training starts in the middle of February, and if a team makes a deep postseason run, the season may not end until the end of October.
During the long and arduous season, players see each other more than they see their families. Philadelphia Phillies legend Ryan Howard told OutKick that a strong clubhouse culture and team chemistry outweigh the team’s talent.
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“Every team has talent, but I always say if you have the culture and chemistry. That culture and chemistry will outweigh talent, any day. To where you put the two together, you’re unstoppable,” Howard told OutKick in a recent interview.
Howard, who spent his entire 13-year career with the Phillies, said it was the coaches who established the clubhouse’s culture.
“I think for us, it started from the top with the coaching staff. When you have coaches that give you a positive environment every single day that you show up, it’s loose, it’s lax, you’ve got coaches that you know are gonna go and they’re gonna fight for you, no matter what, on the field, off the field. You create that environment and it makes it easier for the players to all want to be able to get along,” Howard said.
“When you have people that have the mindset of, hey, we want to win, not want to win, we expect to win. So, when everybody shows up with that mindset, day in and day out, you know the work that’s gonna need to go in and your coaching staff is helping to continue to grow that environment, man, it makes it so easy.”
The 2006 NL MVP said that when the coaches put in the same amount of work, if not more, than the players do to help them become the best they can possibly be, you can’t ask for anything more as a player. In addition to helping everyone become the best players they could be, Howard pointed to the coaching staff holding players accountable as a critical part of a good clubhouse.
The three-time All-Star recalled a time when one of his managers pulled shortstop Jimmy Rollins from a game due to a lack of effort.
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“The manager had to get on my man, young James, Jimmy Rollins, for not running out a fly ball, taking him out of the game. For hitting a pop fly and not running hard down to first base or something like that,” Howard said.
Howard said that in a good clubhouse, coaches aren’t the only ones holding players accountable; the players do so as well. Howard said that on one occasion, Rollins got on outfielder Shane Victorino for jogging after a fly ball.
“It’s one of those things where it’s like, all it took is that one time for you to tell me. And I got it. And then the next play, it’s like, all right, you’re sprinting after the ball or you’re sprinting out of the box, you’re doing it, all it takes is one time because as you said, it’s a long season. So sometimes you’re gonna have those little mental lulls and all that stuff,” Howard said.
“But when you can have the people there to kind of help keep you accountable, again, all it takes is that one time or that that one kick in the butt just to kind of get you back on track and then you’re back moving where we need you to go.”
The Phillies were eliminated by the Atlanta Braves last week in the National League Wild Card Series, and the future looks bleak.
After making the World Series in 2022, they have regressed year after year. In 2023, they lost in the NLCS, lost in the NLDS in 2024 and 2025, and now in the Wild Card round this season.
Since 2022, the team has maintained the same core but has still not managed to get over the hump and win a World Series title. The issue for the Phillies is that the core of first baseman Bryce Harper (33), designated hitter Kyle Schwarber (33), shortstop Trea Turner (33), catcher J.T. Realmuto (35), starting pitchers Zack Wheeler (36), Aaron Nola (33), Jesús Luzardo (29) and Cristopher Sánchez (29) is only getting older.
Howard was in a similar situation later in his career.
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“It’s interesting because having been somewhat in that position where teams I was on, it’s like, hey, at some point, your team continues to age, and you continue to get older, and it’s like, when do you hold on?” Howard said.
He cited the length of many of the core players’ contracts as an issue for the team because they are harder to move in a trade. Harper’s deal runs through 2031, Schwarber’s through 2030, Turner’s through 2033, Realmuto’s through 2028, Wheeler’s through 2027, Nola’s through 2030, Luzardo’s through 2031 and Sánchez’s through 2032.
Compounding the Phillies’ problems, their farm system was ranked 26th in the sport by MLB.com, meaning there aren’t any immediate options to supplant struggling stars. Howard said something has to change for the Phillies, whether players are moved or not.
“If you can’t necessarily move people, then what you gotta do is, is you gotta change. To me, I think you got to change the philosophy and the dynamic inside the clubhouse. ‘Cause if they’re not going anywhere, then you’ve got to switch something up that you’re doing internally. You know, I don’t know whether that’s a playing style. I don’t, I don’t know what that is. I don’t know what that is,” Howard said.
“If you’re going to continue to have the same squad, then you’re going to have to internally as an organization, as a team, have to say, ‘Hey, we’re gonna have to either play a different brand of ball, or we’re gonna have to do this ’ or kind of figure something else out and mix it up, because what’s been going on obviously hasn’t worked in the in the previous few seasons.”
Howard, who is on the Phillies Wall of Fame, said he couldn’t thank all of the coaches, from T-ball to the big leagues, enough for helping him get to where he was in his career. One coach who had a major impact on Howard was assistant hitting coach Ali Modami.
The St. Louis native said Modami was integral to his preparation heading into each game.
“I would run down to the cage, get my man Ali down there, and we would work our routine, starting on the tees, starting our flips, doing all this, doing all that. I would ask him to, hey, work me this way today. Let’s try to do this approach today because this is the approach that I may want to try to take into the game against this pitcher today,” Howard, who spoke on behalf of PAYDAY to highlight the low-key legends who helped shape his career, said.
