Thomas Makes Case As League’s Best Hitter
Frank Thomas shrugs his huge shoulders and flashes a slightly embarrassed smile. The hottest hitter in baseball says he’s mystified by the streak that has him threatening a 40-year-old record.
Thomas, who leads the American League with a .371 average, went 4 for 4 with a walk Sunday as the Chicago White Sox defeated the Oakland Athletics 10-4. One day earlier, he was 3 for 3 with two walks in Chicago’s 7-6 victory.
Heading into tonight’s home game against Boston, Thomas has reached base safely in 12 straight plate appearances - four shy of the major league record set by Ted Williams in September 1957.
But Thomas, hitting .473 with 22 RBIs and 23 runs scored in his last 21 games, says he hasn’t felt comfortable at the plate all season.
“In the 12, there are a lot of cheap hits. A lot of those hits were just fighting the ball off,” he said. “When you’re not ripping the ball, you don’t think in terms of streaks.”
Thomas, who has drawn 40 walks and struck out just 19 times in 40 games this season, is hitting .696 with three homers and 11 RBIs in seven games all Chicago wins - against Oakland this year.
He has a .505 on-base percentage this season. In the three-game weekend sweep at Oakland, Thomas was 9 for 10 with five walks.
“He’ll take a walk, unlike a lot of power hitters. That makes him tough,” said Mike Mohler, the A’s starter and loser on Sunday. “He’s not invincible. He’s just hot right now.”
White Sox manager Terry Bevington said he’s seen Thomas in hotter streaks, and quickly produces a long list supporting his claim that “Frank’s probably the best hitter in the game now.”
It’s a whole new game
Ed Napolean signed his first professional contract before his 18th birthday and now the Rangers third-base coach is 59. Yes, he says, things have changed.
Napolean was in the Texas clubhouse last week when outfielder Lee Stevens and closer John Wetteland - brandishing hockey sticks and in pursuit of a puck - zipped by him on roller blades.
“This game,” Napolean said, “is passing me by.”
McDowell ailing
Just when Jack McDowell started resembling the 1993 version, when he won 22 games and the A.L. Cy Young Award with the Chicago White Sox, a physical problem has set him back again.
The Cleveland Indians put McDowell on the 15-day disabled list Sunday due to a painful right elbow. He was examined twice last week at Lutheran Hospital in Cleveland. Doctors discovered a small piece of soft tissue called a skin flap pinched against a bone.
McDowell was scheduled to fly to Birmingham, Ala., today with team physician Dr. Louis Keppler to meet with a specialist and make a final decision on surgery that could take place as soon as this afternoon.
Henderson’s leadoff legacy
Rickey Henderson knows he must pass on the torch as the game’s premiere leadoff hitter, and last week after his San Diego team played Cincinnati, Henderson said he had seen the future - and it was Deion Sanders.
“When I took over, Willie Wilson was the premier guy,” Henderson said. “(Kenny) Lofton has taken over now, and I was thinking that it was going to be Lofton. But Deion could be the next great one.
“I think the great ones want to draw attention to themselves,” said Henderson, 38. “They want the pitcher to pay attention to them. They want to mess with their minds. They get to drawing so much attention, that pitchers make a lot of mistakes to the hitter.
“When I used to do that, they’d say I was hot-dogging, but a lot of guys used to like to hit behind me. Deion is absolutely distracting,” Henderson said. “It looks like weird stuff he’s doing - the strutting, the faking, the pointing - but he’s working on the pitcher. I did all that stuff. Sooner or later, they forget the hitter, and the runner’s thinking, ‘I got you.”’
Around the majors
The Atlanta Braves are treating Greg Maddux with kid gloves. In his last 17 starts, he has one complete game - and hasn’t thrown more than 100 pitches in any one of them. In fact, Maddux is averaging 79 pitches a game during that span… . Is all well in Cleveland now that Mike Hargrove has been given a two-year contract extension? Well, general manager John Hart didn’t attend the press conference to announce the new deal - and neither did anyone else from the Indians front office… . Tino Martinez was asked why he has 16 home runs in his first 40 games and had an explanation ready: “Pitchers keep throwing me the ball down the middle.”