When looking at individual performance, there isn’t much that legendary slugger Frank Thomas didn’t accomplish during his 19 seasons in the big leagues.
He was a five-time All-Star and a four-time Silver Slugger Award winner. Thomas also won a batting title, the 1995 Home Run Derby, and there are two AL MVP Awards that sit on his mantle at home. Oh, and let’s not forget that he’s a first-ballot Hall of Famer. Thomas earned 83.7% of the vote during his first year of eligibility in 2014.
The Big Hurt was a terrific hitter. He finished his career with a .301/.419/.555 triple slash. His 521 homers are tied for 21st all-time with Willie McCovey and Ted Williams.
But one individual accomplishment eluded Thomas during his career. And, quite honestly, it’s surprising considering how dominant he was — especially throughout his prime.
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Frank Thomas Never Led The League in Homers
Thomas spent most of his prime playing right alongside some of the most absurd power hitters baseball has ever produced. Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, Ken Griffey Jr., Barry Bonds — the era was stacked with guys putting up video-game stat lines, and that context matters a lot for what’s coming next.
We’ve already established that Thomas is one of baseball’s best sluggers. He obviously had to rack up plenty of homers consistently to finish his career with 521 taters. And that’s exactly what he did. Thomas surpassed the 30-homer plateau nine times. He didn’t just stop at 30, either — five of these seasons surpassed the 40-homer plateau.
Thomas hit at least 40 homers three times between 1993 and 1996 (41 in ’93, and 40 in both ’95 and ’96). After a few years without reaching that mark, the right-handed slugger hit a career-high 43 homers with 143 RBI in 2000 before hitting another 42 in 2003.
In every one of those seasons, somebody else had an even bigger year at the plate. And sometimes, it was more than one somebody. Despite his gaudy home run numbers, The Big Hurt never once led the league in taters during his Hall of Fame career. That’s what happens when most of your time in the big leagues comes at the height of the steroid era.
This always cracks me up, though — Frank Thomas was more likely to win an MVP than lead the league in homers during his career. It’s one of those things that you probably wouldn’t believe until physically seeing the proof.
Two career MVP awards and zero home run titles. You don’t run into many Hall of Fame sluggers with a resume looking like that, and it’s a good reminder of just how loaded the American League was with power hitters in the ’90s.
Thomas Did Most of His Work in the Windy City
Before finishing his playing days with the Oakland Athletics and Toronto Blue Jays, Thomas spent the first 16 years of his career with the Chicago White Sox. So, it’s not surprising that most of his stats and individual accomplishments were compiled while playing on the South Side.
The Big Hurt slugged 448 of his 521 homers and collected 1,465 of his 1,704 RBI with the White Sox. He also almost collected the same number of doubles (447) as he did homers, which speaks to just how good a hitter he was.
Thomas is prominently featured on Chicago’s single-season and all-time home run leaderboards. Albert Belle (49 in 1998) and Jermaine Dye (44 in 2006) sit ahead of hime on the single-season leaderboard, but he’s the all-time White Sox home run record holder with those 448 taters.
It’s a record that’s probably safe for a while, too. Paul Konerko is second with 432 homers, but the next closest is Jose Abreu, who finished his White Sox career with 243 homers.
That’s a 205-homer gap between second and third place on the franchise leaderboard, which tells you just how rare it is for a player to stick around one organization long enough and stay productive enough to challenge a legend like Thomas at the top.
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