A major milestone is coming to the land of high socks as Jim Thome approaches his 600th lifetime launched ball. Somewhere a sculptor has begun his bronze carving for the gentleman from Peoria. There will be few abstentions when his Cooperstown candidacy comes up. And yet, Jim Thome is a conundrum. I would argue that he is simultaneously overrated and underrated by baseball cognoscenti.
James Howard Thome was the fifth youngest player in the majors when he first went yard in the waning hours of the 1991 season. Today, at 40, he is the fifth oldest. In between, he's pounded 596 homers, many of them the jaw-dropping variety. He's slugged 40+ homers six times and 30-39 another six. He's scored 100+ runs eight times and knocked in 100+ nine times. Thanks to 1705 walks -- ninth all-time -- he's cracked the .400 on-base level 10 times in his career. His .280/.403/.557 is 47% better than average and was worth 74 wins against a replacement (WARP) in his career.
That's some first-ballot jelly to spread at Cooperstown in five or six years. And yet, it's only part of the story. Thome came up as a decent third baseman, switching to first at age 26 and to full-time DH at 35. So 189 of his homers have come while he wasn't donning leather at all -- at least on the field. He was a mediocre first baseman and while he authors no defensive demerits as a DH, he limits his manager's options and may be forcing a lesser hitter into the lineup because he can't fill a defensive position.
That's some first-ballot jelly to spread at Cooperstown in five or six years. And yet, it's only part of the story. Thome came up as a decent third baseman, switching to first at age 26 and to full-time DH at 35. So 189 of his homers have come while he wasn't donning leather at all -- at least on the field. He was a mediocre first baseman and while he authors no defensive demerits as a DH, he limits his manager's options and may be forcing a lesser hitter into the lineup because he can't fill a defensive position.
Contemporaneously, Thome's exploits have been mostly under-appreciated. He's batted under .270 nine times in his career and played for some awful clubs. He's earned a top-5 MVP vote just once, the year after he led the AL with an impressive 1.122 OPS. (That was 2002 and he was literally twice as good a hitter as the average batsman that season. Miguel Tejada, Alfonso Soriano, Garret Anderson and Torii Hunter all finished ahead of him in the vote despite OPS at least 140 points lower. Tejada won the award because his Oakland team swept their division, even though Alex Rodriguez, who played the same position better, had a higher OBP and SLG, more homers, RBI, runs scored, steals and everything else positive you could measure.)
Now in its gloaming, Thome's career has jumped the shark. Suddenly, in the era of sabermetrics, we're drooling over his 13 .900+ OPS seasons (that's a pretty tasty .400+ on base and .500+ slugging), six of them in the thin air of 1.000+. While turning 40 last year, he still racked up a 1.039 OPS season in 340 plate appearances. But here comes a dirty little secret about OPS.
On-base Plus Slugging stands tall against midgets like ordinary triple-crown stats, but we treat it as if it's Manute Bol. It overrates "three true outcomes" players who slug homers, walk or whiff, and little else. It shortchanges singles hitters, speedsters and leadoff men. Thome took 90+ free passes 12 times in his career, but who wants that lummox clogging up the basepaths? He's fanned 2,437 times in his career, and though a K is only a few electrons worse than a 6-3, a small fraction multiplied by more than two-thousand is no longer bupkis. Thome not only was no threat to steal (19 of 39 in 21 seasons), he slowed the parade behind him. And as I mentioned, his four losses against replacement in career defensive value understates the cost to his teams.
It's all picking of nits: Jim Thome is a Hall of Famer. It's virtually impossible to smack 600 homers and get on base nearly 4,000 times without being enshrined, not withstanding the ingestion of certain metabolic agents. But depending on when you were observing him, you probably either failed to notice his greatness, or got carried away with it.
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On-base Plus Slugging stands tall against midgets like ordinary triple-crown stats, but we treat it as if it's Manute Bol. It overrates "three true outcomes" players who slug homers, walk or whiff, and little else. It shortchanges singles hitters, speedsters and leadoff men. Thome took 90+ free passes 12 times in his career, but who wants that lummox clogging up the basepaths? He's fanned 2,437 times in his career, and though a K is only a few electrons worse than a 6-3, a small fraction multiplied by more than two-thousand is no longer bupkis. Thome not only was no threat to steal (19 of 39 in 21 seasons), he slowed the parade behind him. And as I mentioned, his four losses against replacement in career defensive value understates the cost to his teams.
It's all picking of nits: Jim Thome is a Hall of Famer. It's virtually impossible to smack 600 homers and get on base nearly 4,000 times without being enshrined, not withstanding the ingestion of certain metabolic agents. But depending on when you were observing him, you probably either failed to notice his greatness, or got carried away with it.
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