Daily Dose: April 19-20 - A Big Hurt..

For The Big Hurt.
It's kind of a surprise, but not really. Not at this point in his career.

I had a discussion with Jason Bauman about him a few days ago.

I'm 27 and grew up in the prime of Frank's career with the White Sox. The guy was a machine. So much so that when I talked to legendary baseball writer and official MLB historian Jerome Holtzman about it, he called Thomas the best right handed hitter he had ever seen during a 10 year period from 1990-1999.

Now that's saying something.

Jason and I talked about the conscious choice Frank made toward the end of his tenure with the Sox - the decision to become a straight up slugger, rather than the guy who hit .330 with 30 homeruns.

I struggled with his decision at first - I mean, how do you just do a complete 180 and become a totally different - and in my opinion - lesser hitter? But Jason brought up a good point. Frank's health was severely declining. He was never a speedster, but he was a doubles machine back in the day.

Closer to 40 now, doubles don't do him any good. He can't run them out anyway and he never really had a good shot at 3,000 hits with all the walks he took early on. So he made the choice to become a slugger in order to prolong his career.

I give him credit for that. It's weird to see him hit .265, .270 now...that's for sure. But he's a Hall of Famer, and I guess that's what HOFers do - they adjust. I still love watching him hit though - and I'm fortunate to have grown up watching him.