Eric Thames Homered For The First Time Since May 9 On Wednesday And Was Tested Immediately
He’s cooled off from his red hot start in April when he was on pace to break the single season home run record, but Eric Thames is still on pace to hit 42 home runs this year, something that not many teams, if any, expected him to do, which is why his deal with the Brewers was for a mere $16 million over three years. No, not per year. Total.
According to Yahoo Sports, Thames was tested after hitting a home run in five straight games back on April 17, and again on April 25 when he hit four more bombs. That April 25th MLB drug test was what prompted the “I have lots of blood and urine” interview.
We had Travis Shaw, Thames’ Brewers teammate, on the Section 10 Podcast back on May 9 to discuss this very topic. Shaw revealed to us that Thames had been tested FOUR times by that point, as well as three times himself, including blood tests (for HGH).
It had been a while since we had seen Thames hit one over the fence, but he broke his 15-game homerless streak with a bomb off of Jacob deGrom this past Wednesday, and surprise! He was tested immediately.
POW! WHAM! @EricThames smash! pic.twitter.com/qwl5UF7GiI
— MLB (@MLB) May 31, 2017
Let’s call a spade a spade here — the random drug testing in MLB isn’t random. Some of it more than likely is, and that’s how you catch the shitbum players who are either minor leaguers on the fringe of making it to the big leagues, or major leaguers who are on the fringe of being DFA’d, released or demoted to the minors. But in cases like this with Thames, that ain’t no coincidence, and that’s very much a “no shit, Jared” take. Of course it’s not random.
The question is, do fans care if there’s a such thing as targeted testing? I feel like the older generation will love the aspect of targeted testing because they want a “clean” game, which, in my opinion, will never happen 100%. There will always be guys trying to cheat the system, and some of them will succeed in doing that. But I think the younger generation that grew up with 90’s Steroid Era baseball is in the camp of, “Fuck it. Let ‘em juice.” They care more about 480-foot homers than protecting the integrity of the game. And if that’s your feeling, then God bless. I’m with you. I’m here to be entertained, and there’s a reason why chicks dig the long ball and not infield singles.
For a while there, MLB had a tremendous amount of egg on its face when superstar after superstar got busted for not only taking PEDs, but lying about it on top of that. All of these little kids’ heroes were getting exposed for being frauds one after another, like when kids find out that pro wrestling isn’t real, we were finding out that these superstar baseball players weren’t actually superhero home run hitters.
But you know what? The game was better when we didn’t know the truth, or at least when we pretended like we didn’t know. If guys are still taking shit now that allows them to put up video game numbers, all the power to ‘em. Literally. That’s what fans want to see. I’m about the growth and the overall popularity of the game more than the integrity of it. I leave that to the dorks in the BBWAA. When was baseball at its best? You tell me.