Powerful and Likable, Milwaukee Brewers' Eric Thames Is Quickly Becoming a Star

No matter what you may have heard, it's absolutely not true that Eric Thames came out of nowhere to become baseball's April home run sensation.        

He came out of Korea, where he won MVP honors for the NC Dinos by hitting 47 home runs in a season. He came out of the Toronto Blue Jays minor league system, where he displayed his power impressively but only occasionally. He came out of Pepperdine University in California, where a Blue Jays scout named Jon Lalonde fell in love with a powerful bat.

"You walk into the park some days and you just get that feeling, that 'I'm seeing a major league hitter,'" Lalonde said Wednesday.

It's the feeling everyone got when they watched Thames hit for the Milwaukee Brewers this month. The 11 home runs have come in just 90 plate appearances. He's hit fastballs, sliders and changeups, pitches as fast as 96 mph and as slow as 72, according to Baseball Savant's Statcast. His incredible start put him on pace to hit 77 home runs this season. 

Oh, and in case you're wondering, he has also been drug-tested twice this month, most recently Tuesday after home run No. 11.

The results of that test won't be in for a while, but Thames' reaction to being tested scooted around the internet late Tuesday and early Wednesday. It was perfect in words and in tone, disarming those who would accuse him without evidence but also showing an understanding of why some would be skeptical of a guy who hit couldn't hold a regular major league job until now.

Here it is, courtesy of a tweet from MLB.com's Adam McCalvy:

Thames comes off as a thoroughly likable guy, which is exactly the way those who knew him before this season describe him.

"I found him to be super-pleasant," Lalonde said. "He has that rough, tough look with that beard, but he's nothing like that."

He actually is a little like that distinctive beard, perhaps not rough and tough but definitely a little eccentric.

When Thames played in Korea, his Twitter bio described him as "Enforcer for NC Dinos and Sosnick Cobbe Sports [his agents]. Meathead, gamer, weirdo and proud representative of the Thames clan." He's changed it now to "Stunt double for CT Fletcher, baseball player and occasional gamer."

Check out his Twitter feed, and you'll see an occasional tweet in Korean. Thames took time to learn the language when he played there, which tells you quite a bit about him.

Thames learned more than just a new language in three seasons in the Far East. He left the majors as a player who struggled to recognize breaking balls and lay off the ones out of the zone and returned as a guy with much better understanding.

"He's got a plan now," an American League scout who watched him in Korea told me for a Bleacher Report story I did last December. "Do I think he can play in the big leagues? No doubt. He can definitely play in the big leagues."

The numbers suggest Thames carried his plan from Korea to Milwaukee and that the plan is working. It's not just the home run numbers either.

FanGraphs says in his two previous major league seasons, Thames swung at 36.8 and 35.6 percent of the pitches he saw outside the strike zone. He has cut that down to 19.8 percent this month with the Brewers.

It's a remarkable story, one that was momentarily interrupted Wednesday when Thames had to leave the Brewers' game against the Reds at Miller Park with tightness in his left hamstring. Fortunately, as McCalvy reported on MLB.com, Brewers manager Craig Counsell said "it's not a big deal," and Thames said he expects to be back in the lineup Friday when the Brewers play their next game.

Thames is a big deal now. I wrote in that December story that his three-year, $16 million contract was "either the biggest bargain deal for an MVP or the worst shot in the dark on a guy who hit .220 with six home runs in his last major league season."

It looks pretty good now. It looks like Thames really is the guy Lalonde convinced then-Blue Jays general manager J.P. Ricciardi to draft in the seventh round in 2008.

"He kept telling me he liked this kid,” Ricciardi said. "He said, 'J.P., this is my guy in the draft. I believe in this guy.' I pressed him hard on it because I thought [Thames] looked a little stiff on video. He kept telling me, 'I see the swing. I see the power.'"

The Blue Jays never got to see it for themselves at the major league level. Thames got in 141 games for Toronto in 2011 and 2012 and was never more than a part-time player. The Jays traded him to the Seattle Mariners in July 2012, and after a minor league stop in the Baltimore Orioles organization, he left for Korea.

"So many players just need more at-bats, and they can't get them at the major league level," Ricciardi said. "He's a great kid with great work habits, and you're happy for guys like that. How could you not be?"

How could you not like Eric Thames right now? Just go back and look at that video again.

Danny Knobler covers Major League Baseball as a national columnist for Bleacher Report.

Follow Danny on Twitter and talk baseball.