Baseball Musings
Baseball Musings
July 19, 2006
Little Hurts

The Oakland Athletics defeated the Baltimore Orioles 5-1 today to assure they stay in first place. Frank Thomas drove in the first two runs of the game with a single in the first, and added a solo home run later. The RBI single was unusual for Thomas this year. Of his 51 RBI in 2006, twenty seven came via the home run. Only fourteen come via the single. In the past, Thomas' high batting average allowed him to drive in runs many ways. Now, it seems to be power or nothing. Only 10 of his singles resulted in RBI this year.


Posted by David Pinto at 03:06 PM | Sluggers | TrackBack (0)
Comments

You know...as much as Thomas is struggling with his BA this year, it is important to point out that his overall numbers are pretty darn good:

.245/.375/.506/.881

While his average is down, his OBP and SLUG are still quite good, making his OPS quite good, at least for someone making so little money.

I still say that this was a great deal by Billy Beane - one of the most underrated deals this year.

Posted by: dave at July 19, 2006 04:24 PM

BTW...in July Thomas has the following numbers:

.283/.450/.478/.928

The power has dropped slightly, but the average has increased. I would take those numbers for this 1 million dollar salary anyday.

Posted by: dave at July 19, 2006 04:27 PM

I don't know if you can fault Thomas for not driving in more runs via non-HR batting (single, double, sac fly, groundout) - my suspicion is that the A's simply don't have runners in scoring position for him to drive in by anything *but* home runs (given their anemic batting average) (as the cleanup hitter, I'd bet he comes up most often to start an inning, or at best with a guy at first, rather than a couple runners on, and especially at third).

Which is sort of ironic, because injuries have made it impossible for Thomas to go more than one base at a time, so he's got to be driven around the bases one at a time himself ;-)

Posted by: Chris at July 20, 2006 11:01 AM
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