For those of you who've been watching Spring Training instead of the World Baseball Classic, especially Yankee fans, please calm down. (For that matter, those of you who have been watching the WBC and are getting upset about the fact that the United States has not doen as well as hoped, you should really calm down. Think of it this way: The sooner the U.S. loses and gets eliminated, the sooner your favorite player will have to return to Spring Training and get ready to play some games with real meaning. But tha's a story for another time.)
I'm talking about the Spring Numbers Myth, specifically in reference to Kevin Thompson, this week's prospect study. MLB.com's beat writer for the Yankees, mark Feinsand, wrote a piece about Thompson yesterday, and it occurs to me that this is exactly the sort of powder-puff writing that tends to get Yankee fans unnecessarily and inappropriately excited about a player who stands about as much chance of being an impact player for the Yankees as I have of suddenly growing a third arm (though that would make it easier to scratch my own back...) 
Kevin Thompson (c. MLB.com)
Thompson's having a nice spring, hitting .400 with a homer, four RBI and five runs in 12 games, but I'm reminded of Jim Bouton's exchange with the Yankees' pitching coach in the spring of 1960something, as related in Ball Four. The coach tells him that he's having a better year than Dooley Womack, and that they're considering bringing him up with the club, to which he responds something like,
Read the rest at Pending Pinstripes...
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