Ed Howard Among Highest Exit Velocity Gainers in 2024

If you’ve followed the Cubs minor league system even for a little bit, then you probably know about Ed Howard, the 2020 first round shortstop who had his development derailed a few years ago following a brutal hip injury. Howard, now 22-years-old, has struggled to maintain a league-average bat in the minor leagues since returning from surgery, but if you’re looking for some optimism, then this is certainly an encouraging trend from 2024.

Howard spent most of 2024 with the South Bend Cubs at Advanced A-Ball before a surprising promotion to Triple-A for the final couple weeks in the Iowa Cubs season. His overall numbers were ugly as Howard slashed .225/.281/.298, which produced a 67 wRC+ in 436 plate appearances. Howard’s best stretch lasted two months, when he posted. 106 wRC+ in May and June.

So yeah, not looking all too great, but here’s Baseball America to give us some hope for Howard. Following the end of the 2024 minor league season, Baseball America wrote about the prospects who gained the most 90th percentile exit velocity.

Let’s break down what all this means.

Via Baseball America.

Exit velocity measures in particular have become as common in baseball conversation and content as batting average or on-base percentage. The ability to measure a player’s average exit velocity gives us a good idea of how hard a player hits the ball. Hitting the ball hard has proven to correlate directly with slugging and production in general. 

We look at a variety of exit velocity metrics including average exit velocity, 90th percentile exit velocity and max exit velocity. Average exit velocity captures the consistency of hard contact and gives us a good idea of how hard a player hits the ball. 

90th percentile exit velocity goes a step further looking at the top 10% exit velocities. This gives us a measure of a player’s high-end power and has proven to be more predictive of power in following seasons than average exit velocity.

What’s the purpose of this when discussing prospects?

…it correlates more closely with breakthroughs in power production. We’ve seen this over a set of three seasons, giving us greater confidence in the 90th percentile metric being predictive of future performance and real power gains.

It turns out that in 2024 Howard improved his 90th percentile exit velocity from 99.5mph to 103.9mph. That was the eighth-highest improvement from any minor leaguer this past season.

This isn’t a guarantee that Howard is all of a sudden going to turn it around at the plate, but it’s at least good to see that the infielder has made improvements in his development. No matter what, hitting the ball harder will generally lead to better results.

An example of a player improving in this area that led to immediate improvement the next year is top-100 Cubs prospect James Triantos. The infielder was on Baseball America’s 2023 list for minor leaguers who gained the most on their exit velocity numbers and Triantos followed that up by posting a 130 wRC+ at Double-A in 2024 after recording a 115 wRC+ in 2023.

Howard has plenty of work to do on his hitting to gain any relevance in the Cubs farm system, but because of that major hip injury in 2022, it’s easy to forget that the shortstop only has 260 games in the minor leagues. Maybe we can give Howard a bit longer before completely giving up on his potential.

Fingers crossed that Howard does put it all together with the Cubs.

Surprise Promotion for Ed Howard

I doubt anyone had this on their bingo card, but infield prospect Ed Howard, who was taken in the first round of the 2020 MLB Draft out of high school, has reportedly been promoted to Triple-A Iowa. Howard, 22, has been playing at Advanced A-Ball with the South Bend Cubs since the beginning of the 2022 season and after 102 games at that level in 2024, Howard is skipping Double-A.

According to Iowa Cubs beat reporter Tommy Birch, Howard is expected to make his Triple-A debut Tuesday night.

A big surprise for sure, especially when you consider that Howard has struggled to sustain consistent success at the plate at A+ Ball. The 22-year-old has posted a 74 wRC+ in 395 plate appearances at South Bend this season. The right-handed hitter recorded a slash line of .234/.289/.310, with a 28.1% strikeout rate.

Howard was picked 16th overall in 2020 by the Cubs. Unfortunately for the shortstop injuries have stunted his development since entering pro ball. He missed more than a month of action because of a hamstring injury in 2021, and then Howard suffered a devastating season-ending hip injury 23 games into his 2022 season that required surgery.

It’s been a slow path for Howard in the minor leagues, but maybe this move has more to do with the latest first round pick of the Cubs. Third baseman Cam Smith, who was the 14th overall selection in the 2024 MLB Draft, has been promoted to Double-A this week. So, it’s possible that the Cubs skipped Howard up to Triple-A in order to guarantee Smith playing time at Double-A.

Regardless of the reasoning, you still want to root for Howard. There is still a ton of talent there with him and despite being in the Cubs system since 2020, Howard has only played in 250 minor league games. The injuries have obviously been a stinker for Howard, but you have to remember that he didn’t get to play his senior year in high school and at 22-years-old there’s still time for him to develop.

Other thoughts here. Are the Cubs going to call up Matt Shaw and that’s why Howard is headed to Triple-A? Is there an injury with the Iowa Cubs? Is Matt Shaw injured? Hopefully it’s not the latter.