Photo via Twitter / @NCdinos_fan
As the Brewers look to overcome payroll limitations and build a postseason contender again in 2021, they’ll probably need to find help in some unlikely places. That’s exactly what they did four years ago this week.
On November 29, 2016 the Brewers announced they had signed first baseman Eric Thames to a three-year contract. Thames was 30 years old and hadn’t played in the majors since 2012. His first two years in the big leagues had been somewhat forgettable: He played for the Blue Jays and Mariners and batted .250 with a .296 on-base percentage and .431 slugging in 181 games between the 2011 and 2012 seasons. He had been traded by Toronto and Seattle, waived by the Orioles and released by the Astros by the end of the 2013 season, which he spent in the minors.
Since then, however, Thames had traveled across the Pacific and become a sensation. In 2014 he agreed to join the Korean Baseball Organization’s NC Dinos, and his career turned a corner nearly immediately upon his arrival. The KBO is a hitter-friendly league but Thames dominated in that space, batting .343 and hitting 37 home runs in 125 games in his first season.
His second year was even better, as he batted .381, posted a .497 on-base and slugged .790 while leading NC, a recent expansion team, to their first-ever Korean Series appearance. He was the KBO MVP that season, becoming just the third foreign-born player ever to receive that honor, and was the first player in KBO history to hit 40 home runs and steal 40 bases in a season. In 2016 he posted an on-base plus slugging over 1.100 for the third consecutive season. Thames was an extremely productive player on the field and a massively popular star off of it.
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Asia’s Biggest Stars
It was unclear at the time, however, how any of that would translate back to the United States. While Thames was one of Asia’s biggest stars, in the US his track record still showed him as a player who had struggled to stick in the majors. The Brewers had bought in for three years based on Thames’ scouting report and potential, but until he took the field it was impossible to know how much success he’d be able to repeat against MLB pitching.
Furthermore, the Brewers were turning to Thames to fill some large shoes. Chris Carter had played first base for the Brewers the previous season, appearing in 160 games and crushing 41 home runs, the National League’s highest total. A few days after signing Thames the Brewers made the bold decision to non-tender the league’s reigning home run champion instead of paying him an estimated $8 million to return for 2017. Carter became a free agent and eventually signed with the Yankees.
The move was certainly not without risk. If Thames had struggled out of the gate or Carter had crushed some early home runs with the Yankees, it wouldn’t have taken long at all for fans to start to question relatively new GM David Stearns’ decision to give up on a proven commodity in Carter and turn to a relative unknown in Thames.
Of course, neither of those things happened. Carter struggled in a partial season with the Yankees and Thames burst onto the scene in Milwaukee, hitting a two-run double in his debut and connecting for eleven home runs in his first 20 games. By the end of April Thames was a sensation in Milwaukee and his previous MLB struggles were all but forgotten.
The Brewers have since moved on from Thames, but this winter they may need to write a similar story. With a limited payroll and holes on the roster to fill, Stearns’ opportunity to build a contending team for 2021 likely depends on his ability to once again catch lightning in a bottle with more players that other teams have overlooked.
