"Personally, I feel like I hit .300 every year, but obviously because of the shift, I don’t know how many hits I get taken away from the shifts, I don’t know if people keep that stat, but mentally I go out there and I feel like I’m doing the same things," Howard said. "Sometimes I’ll hit a ground balls and I feel like they’re legitimate outs, but true line-drive base hits that if the second baseman was playing his normal position they would be a base hit, I don’t try to get caught up in the whole batting average thing because I’m playing on kind of a different field I guess."