..... M's 1
=== Eric Thames Plays Catch-Up ===
Let's say we didn't have any stats, any background, no performance to go off of? Let's say we'd just traveled to Cuba to catch a weekend series, and all these guys had been wearing Cuban uniforms? I'd have said for sure that the M's three good hitters were Carp, Jaso, and Eric Thames.
Next time you get a chance? Check out how long Thames reads the pitch before he decides whether to swing. Man, he takes a looooong look. And then he whips that Jose Lopez speedy gonzalez Andale! Andale! Arriba! bat through the zone and he can pull anything.
This was Ted Williams' number one rule. Be quick - quick!, he'd yell at Yaz, breaking him out of a slump. Thames is one of the quickest batters you'll see.
............
Bruce Lee talked about "being as quick as you can, without flickiness." It's fine to be quick, but there must also be load and drive-through. Thames does both. He's quick, he's got acceleration on the through-swing, he waits on the pitch and lets it come to him, and he seems comfortable with various lengths of pitches.
He even has a natural ability to hit the top half of the ball, and he comes over the top of it a bit, gets a certain amount of topspin. I can't imagine what his deal has been. Well, he did SLG .456 for the Jays last year, at the age of 25. Maybe this year he was hanging his head a little over his playing time.
True, he's got to SLG close to .500 with his skill set, and he definitely needs to tighten his strike zone. But it's easy to see the potential. Not talking about balls and strikes, but just watching him hit, he kind of reminds me of the young Bobby Abreu.
If you're a Thames fan -- Dr. D is not, necessarily, but if you are -- there are a whale of a lot of stars who were worse than he is, at his age now. Just going loosely off memory here real quick, don't quote me, but ... Raul Ibanez, Jason Varitek, Jose Bautista, Nelson Cruz, Geronimo Berroa, Matt Stairs, Josh Willingham ... it's fine to be aware of the tendencies on age-arcs. Don't be encumbered by them as dogmatic cliches.
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=== M's 1:0 Yankees ===
Seemed tight, but the hits were 8 to 2 (one of them being Ichiro, extending his hitting streak to 11). John Jaso, for example, had men on base, hit a screeaaaammmming line drive down the RF line, but it tore Mark Teixeira's mitt off.
The M's are one more winning streak away from talking wild card, and if the games are going to be important it's awfully nice to have Felix going in 20% of your ballgames.