Who the f*ck is Eric Thames?

[Time to Mo Vaughn]

After never breaking into the big leagues, he spent three years in Korea and coming off a league MVP signed a 3-year $16M total deal with the Brewers.

He now leads the league with 11 HRs and is on pace for like 80. He's 30 years old and it appears his .348/41 HRs/126 RBI average season may not just have been due to inferior competition.

 

[Scoops Bolling]

Thames did break into the big leagues prior to this year. He had a decent debut in 2011 after a great run in the minors. A couple bad years later, and IIRC with no MLB offers on the table, he went off to Korea. I'd been a huge fan of his during his prospect days, but pretty much gave up on him when he jumped to Korea. I had minimal expectations when he signed with the Brewers. What he's done is...shocking. He won't keep this up (who could?), but if you came from the future and told me he pulls off a Joey Bats-esque run, I could believe it.

 

[Kliq]

Thames is like Trumbo last year although Thames sunk a little lower than Trumbo ever did. He always had big-time power but could never really put it together for an extended stretch until he went to Korea. The raw talent of Eric Thames was never really a question, as Scoops said he was a pretty highly regarded prospect, sometimes it takes guys a while to catch up to the big leagues. Plenty of scouts said back when he was coming up that Thames would be a 40+ HR hitter in the majors, it just wasn't assumed he would do that in 2017 after playing in Korea.

 

[absintheofmalaise]

We had an article on the differences in Thames swing on the .com on the 21st written by Joseph Ferriaola. It has some good information in it.