Jim Thome Hits 600 HR #HOF

Yesterday, on August 15, 2011, Jim Thome hit 2 home runs for the Minnesota Twins to make them 599 and 600 career home runs for the Southpaw Slugger.

You can read an old post I write about here or read what I wrote below:

Today, on July 31, 2011, Minnesota Twins DH Jim Thome hit his 597th home run. It is likely that he will hit his 600th career home run later this year. Maybe this post is more appropriate when Thome does end up getting three more dingers, but I'm bored right now and I want to make sure this post gets written as opposed to me wanting to write it but then claim I am too busy when that 600th hit comes.

Even though I am a White Sox fan and Thome only played four seasons on The South Side as opposed to 12 with a ChiSox inter division rival (the Indians), I will always love Jim Thome as a baseball fan. It also helps that I really only started getting into baseball in 2005.

The reason for this post is because I feel Thome gets no love. It doesn't help that he played the vast majority of his career in small markets. Cleveland will never get the kind of love on ESPN that Boston or New York gets. He played four seasons on the less covered Chicago team and is currently on his second season for the Twinkies in Minnesota. That is 18 out of his 21 year career on a non-major market team.

Everyone makes the biggest stink in the world about A-Rod's 600th home run and the overrated Derek Jeter's 3,000th hit but when a guy like Jim Thome has a countdown to a monumental feat, nobody (and by nobody I mean ESPN) seems to care.

However, Thome is one of the greatest offensive players of his generation. He played for that great Indians line up in the 90's that included greats like Albert Belle, Manny, Kenny Lofton, and Omar Vizquel. That line up was like the modern day Big Red Machine or the precursor to this 2011 Boston Beast.

For right now, I would like to take a look at Thome's career stats and just stare at awe and wonder at them and hope he gets your respect (if he hasn't already) that he deserves. Thome has a career .277 batting average to go along with his career .403 on base and .960 career OPS (for those of you who can not or do not want to do the math, that is a career .557 SLG).

Thome's 597 home runs are good for 8th best all time and is the 5th best player in history with a 13.8 at-bat per home run.

And Jim Thome did all of this in the steroid era without any whiff or hint that he ever took performance-enhancing drugs.

One last thing / anecdote before I leave. I was watching a White Sox game in 2006 when the camera panned to a young male fan in the stands holding up a sign. The sign read: "My mom thinks Scottie's [Scott Podsednik] a hottie but Thome's my homey" I feel like that's the kind of guy Thome was. He was a guy everyone loved. When Sox GM Kenny Williams shipped Thome off to the Dodgers in 2009, he convinced everyone in Chicago that this was best for the guy and we all seemed to like the move, even though it hurt the team in the long run. Thome had a much better chance at winning a title with playoff bound L.A. as opposed to the struggling White Sox. Even though Thome could and still can produce, we all just wanted what was best for Jim Thome and we didn't care about our silly ol' team.

*double chest pound with right fist* Props to you Jim Thome. May you get the respect you deserve.

The Underrated Jim Thome

Today, on July 31, 2011, Minnesota Twins DH Jim Thome hit his 597th home run. It is likely that he will hit his 600th career home run later this year. Maybe this post is more appropriate when Thome does end up getting three more dingers, but I'm bored right now and I want to make sure this post gets written as opposed to me wanting to write it but then claim I am too busy when that 600th hit comes.

Even though I am a White Sox fan and Thome only played four seasons on The South Side as opposed to 12 with a ChiSox inter division rival (the Indians), I will always love Jim Thome as a baseball fan. It also helps that I really only started getting into baseball in 2005.

The reason for this post is because I feel Thome gets no love. It doesn't help that he played the vast majority of his career in small markets. Cleveland will never get the kind of love on ESPN that Boston or New York gets. He played four seasons on the less covered Chicago team and is currently on his second season for the Twinkies in Minnesota. That is 18 out of his 21 year career on a non-major market team.

Everyone makes the biggest stink in the world about A-Rod's 600th home run and the overrated Derek Jeter's 3,000th hit but when a guy like Jim Thome has a countdown to a monumental feat, nobody (and by nobody I mean ESPN) seems to care.

However, Thome is one of the greatest offensive players of his generation. He played for that great Indians line up in the 90's that included greats like Albert Belle, Manny, Kenny Lofton, and Omar Vizquel. That line up was like the modern day Big Red Machine or the precursor to this 2011 Boston Beast.

For right now, I would like to take a look at Thome's career stats and just stare at awe and wonder at them and hope he gets your respect (if he hasn't already) that he deserves. Thome has a career .277 batting average to go along with his career .403 on base and .960 career OPS (for those of you who can not or do not want to do the math, that is a career .557 SLG).

Thome's 597 home runs are good for 8th best all time and is the 5th best player in history with a 13.8 at-bat per home run.

And Jim Thome did all of this in the steroid era without any whiff or hint that he ever took performance-enhancing drugs.

One last thing / anecdote before I leave. I was watching a White Sox game in 2006 when the camera panned to a young male fan in the stands holding up a sign. The sign read: "My mom thinks Scottie's [Scott Podsednik] a hottie but Thome's my homey" I feel like that's the kind of guy Thome was. He was a guy everyone loved. When Sox GM Kenny Williams shipped Thome off to the Dodgers in 2009, he convinced everyone in Chicago that this was best for the guy and we all seemed to like the move, even though it hurt the team in the long run. Thome had a much better chance at winning a title with playoff bound L.A. as opposed to the struggling White Sox. Even though Thome could and still can produce, we all just wanted what was best for Jim Thome and we didn't care about our silly ol' team.

*double chest pound with right fist* Props to you Jim Thome. May you get the respect you deserve.

Quick DH Rant

Disclaimer: I do not like the DH (which may seem odd as I have a degree in economics and am essentially saying that I do not believe in the division of labor) and I am not here to defend its existence in baseball. I am simply here to defend an underappreciated DH who belongs in a DH-only role.

I was listening to 670 THE SCORE earlier today, and heard a strange comment by Mully and Hanley. Mully and Hanley tried to say "hey look, we love Jim Thome and appreciate all that he's done for Chicago, but he was only a 1 WAR player last season" (in actuality, Thome was a +1.5 WAR player in 3-4 months (he did not play in NL-interleague games) of ABs for the White Sox as a DH, and a -0.2 WAR player off the bench for the Dodgers in extremely limited ABs). Bless their hearts for trying to use Fangraphs and sabermetrics to support their arguments, but it's important to use the statistics right for them to be valuable and effective.

True, Thome is aging, worth "only" about +2 WAR pr 600 PAs and is also limited by both age and health to a DH-only role. +2 WAR is still valuable, but let's just say it's not enough for the Sox. What Mully and Hanley didn't account for, however, is that DH's generally have limited value in general because they provide one-side of the game contribution and get a -17.5 run reduction (-1.7 WAR) from their batting line. In other words, any DH is inherently less valuable and going to have limited value in comparison to "other baseball players" who play the field.

If you are signing a player in general who will play the field, you want a guy who will maximize his total contribution. In the average player, this contribution is a combination of position, offense and defense. Because there are more inputs for the non-DH, a non-DH who does not have Adam Dunn-like fielding abilities will inherently have a higher WAR; especially if they play a premium position like SS. The higher the WAR, the better the player. Teams want +5 WAR guys over the +3 WAR guys and the +2 WAR guys over the +1 WAR guys.

However, the perspective of evaluation must change slightly when you look to sign a DH-only player. A DH-only player only contributes offense. His WAR will be negatively impacted by the fact that he is a DH, no matter how good his bat is. If player A and player B are both equally good at offense, but player A is an average defensive LF (-7.5 run adjustment, +0 fielding runs) and player B is a DH (-17.5 run adjustment), WAR would not be the best method to evaluate which player to sign if you are looking to sign either A or B to a DH-only role. Player A looks better because his WAR is likely to be a full integer higher than B, but that does not mean A will be more valuable than B in the DH-only role. What teams should be looking at when evaluating prospective DH-only role players is not "who had the better WAR," but who had the better Batting Runs Above Replacement (BRAR) line.

Quick tangent, on that note: Rotating mediocre offensive players, whose total value comes from all-around play, through the DH role is a terrible idea. The DH exists to maximize offense. Omar Visquel, who posted +1.3 WAR in limited action (62 games) last season, will not translate into winning additional games if you play him at DH.

You want a guy like Thome because all he can give you is batting and he does it quite well. As I mentioned before, it is one thing if you are someone who can play OF or 1B or whatever. If this be the case, then by all means, please use WAR to compare and contrast players. Here, you want the healthiest, most all-around contributing player. However, this is a DH-only situation for Jim Thome and any team looking to sign him is looking for a DH-only player to play only DH. In this situation, you need to look not at WAR, but BRAR, and note that a DH-only player is bound to have a more limited WAR than comparably good hitting non-DH-only players.

Of all DH's who received 250+ PA's last year, only three (Adam Lind, Jason Kubel and Hideki Matsui) had WARs higher than Thome (who posted a +1.5 WAR mark as a DH for the Sox). Of those three, only Lind was worth +3 or more WAR (+3.7, to be exact). Additionally, all three of Lind, Kubel and Matsui received somewhere between 100 and 200 more PA's than Thome did in 2009.

Thus, we cannot evaluate a DH from last season, who we are prospectively signing as DH for this season, and say "oh he's only an X WAR guy." Obviously the guy whose slightly good at defense and offense combined and plays a valuable position will be worth more in the field, but as a DH, it's about one thing and one thing only. What's your batting line? And Thome's is still good.

__________________

ADDENDUM: I would also here like to here quote an earlier post, as I feel this comment is quite relevant to this overall argument:

"As a RF, Dunn's cumulative batting and fielding production gets a -7.5 positional adjustment (UZR measures all defense equally; Fangraphs accounts for differences in fielding difficulty between positions in WAR calculations thru positional adjustments). As a DH, Dunn would get a flat -17.5 positional adjustment and a zero fielding rating. In other words, as a DH, Dunn just get -17.5 runs subtracted from his batting line. As a RF (or LF, for that matter), Dunn gets -7.5 subtracted from his batting line in addition to his lackluster fielding. Thus Dunn, like anyone with a consistent -10 or worse fielding glove at RF/LF, belongs in a DH role."

The same holds true for any 1B who plays with a -12.5 FRAR (Fielding Runs Above Replacement) or worse glove. They too, like the poor outfielder and frequently unhealthy slugger, belong in a DH-only role. The thing is, it's very hard to be that bad at first base...only Adam Dunn was at least that bad last season...

Can The White Sox PLEASE Bring Back Thome

ESPNChicgao reported that Ozzie Guillen wants to make up his mind about whether or not to resign Jim Thome by tomorrow. The answer should be a clear and unequivocal "Yes, I want to sign Jim Thome!"

This argument of a rotating DH is dumb. Just like what Matthew Berry says- you always want the line up that consists of the best players to give you the best chance of winning, and Thome is a better player than any of the players the Sox are considering for their rotating DH role (like Omar Vizquel, Andruw Jones, or Mark Kotsay).

At age 39, Thome can still play (at DH). There have been minimal decline in his skills during his stint on the Sox and there's no reason that if Thome doesn't play defense (which he won't), that he can't stay relatively healthy and productive. And the fact that Thome is still on the open market tells me that other teams are also dumb, they don't want Thome, and thus the Sox should be able to get him relatively cheap.

Here is all the categories Thome was better than Kotsay, Jones, or Vizquel last year:
-BB%
-OBP
-OPS
-RC+
-HR
-Dollars (fangraphs stat)
-Salary (fangraphs stat)
-Batting value (fangraphs stat) [Vizquel and Kotsay were negative]
-WPA
-Clutch
-Grandiness
-RBI
-BB

You may not understand all of the stats, but just understand this, Jim Thome is a better offensive player than any player being considered for Guillen's "rotating DH" spot

Sure, there are absolutely signs of Thome's age coming around, like a steady decrease of his ISO since he joined the Sox (yet last year Thome still had a better ISO than Vizquel and Kotsay last year). But Thome is still walking at a constant rate, hitting fly balls and line drives at a fairly constant rate. Sure he's been swinging at pitches outside the zone more and more for the past three years, but he's also been making more and more contact with balls thrown outside the zone as well. Fact is, Jim Thome has a damn fine eye for pitches still (kind of goes along with DME's theory for why older players in baseball tend to be guys that also walk a lot) and can still be productive.

Jim Thome is without a doubt the Sox's best option at DH, can still play, and probably would not cost the Sox a lot. I see no downside to signing Thome and again am pissed at Kenny Williams being a dumbass.

Carl Skanberg summed it up nicely (Smells Like Mascot link on right and scroll down to the "Quest for DH" comic strip).

The king of generalizations

On the topic of making drastic, unrealistic generalizations based on small sample sizes, we have to introduce the king of kings, Hawk Harrelson. We all know he is prone to hyperbole. Like Miguel Olivo having the strongest arm of any catcher in major league history. Or Neal Cotts having the best delivery in the league. Or an umpire making the worst call ever, every single game. Or Hawk claiming to invent the game of baseball.

Well boys and girls, he have a new one to add to the collection. After the very first game of the baseball season, Hawk went on the Waddle and Silvey radio show and proclaimed that 'Jim Thome is swinging the bat right now better than he has in his career.' Seriously Hawk? You have seen a total of one game this season! Yes, he did hit the game winning home run in the 8th, but how does that equate to swinging the bat better than he has in his career. Mind i remind you that Jim Thome has had 6 40-homer seasons and set the major league record for 8 straight games with a home run.

Henry Blanco his 2 home runs last night. I proclaim he is the best baseball player since babe ruth. End of conversation