All hail ‘Tommy Tanks,’ best baseball player on earth right now
By Jake Mintz
FOX Sports MLB Writer
How many home runs is too many home runs?
A gentleman named Tommy White is on a mission to find out. The freshman first baseman at North Carolina State University has rebelled against the laws of sport and of physics by blasting a mind-melting nine home runs in his first nine career games.
He’s posting exit velocities that would be in the top 5% in the big leagues, let alone college ball. Every at-bat of his is must-see TV. At this point, whenever he doesn’t send one over the fence, it’s a letdown.
On Feb. 18, in his first game with the Wolfpack, "Tommy Tanks" smacked three taters, something that has never, ever happened in more than a century of Major League Baseball. The 6-foot, 242-pound White followed that with another bomb each of the next two days against the University of Evansville to give him five in the opening series.
White went homerless in NC State’s two midweek games against Longwood and High Point before bouncing back (lol) with four more last weekend against Quinnipiac.
His season numbers are ludicrous, even after a 1-for-5 performance in NC State’s loss to Campbell on Wednesday. White is 21-for-39 with nine home runs. That’s a .588/.650/1.412 slash line and a 2.062 OPS.
With MLB still embroiled in the messy fallout from the official postponement of Opening Day, the vibes around the sport are ... not great right now. But with big-league spring training delayed until further notice as the owners and union continue to negotiate a new CBA, more eyeballs than ever before are locked in on college baseball.
And our home-dingering hero Tommy White is taking full advantage.
Let’s take a closer look at the phenomenal freshman’s scorching start and see how it compares to some of the greatest hot streaks in baseball history.
First off, let's talk about how Tommy White got to campus in the first place. How does a hitter this good not get drafted straight out of high school by a big-league club? It’s even more bizarre on the surface when you consider that White attended high school at the IMG Academy in Florida, which has a team among the most seen in the country by MLB scouts.
The simple answer is: He’s a right-handed-hitting first baseman. One of those hasn't been drafted and signed out of high school since a guy named Corey Zangari was picked by the White Sox in the sixth round in 2015. That’s because a player with a profile such as White’s has no defensive fallback plan and is wholly reliant on pure hitting ability, something scouts can’t really judge until he faces elite competition. And because the jump from high school to pro pitching is so big, scouts like to see one-dimensional sluggers prove it at the college level before committing in the draft.
There’s a long list of righty-hitting, strong, bat-dependent, defensively limited players such as Tommy White who got snubbed in the draft out of high school, only to explode onto the pro radar in college. Some of those guys, such as 2020 No. 1 overall pick Spencer Torkelson and 2019 No. 3 overall pick Andrew Vaughn, developed into elite hitters and got drafted high despite being first basemen.
Others, such as former TCU slugger Luken Baker and 2016 Clemson freshman sensation Seth Beer (even though he was a lefty), saw their star dim in college as concerns about their hitting ability came to the fore. Beer still made the big leagues, and Baker had a solid year in Double-A in 2021.
White has another three years to prove himself capable of being a legit hitter at the next level, but the important thing is what he’s doing right now.
There’s no Baseball Reference stathead search for college baseball, but if you compare White’s stretch with the best starts to a career in MLB history, he’s top of the charts. Trevor Story’s seven homers in his first nine games in 2016 were the most to kick off a career ever. Nobody else has more than five.
The best nine-game stretch in MLB history, not necessarily to start a career, actually happened last season, when Kyle Schwarber smacked 11 homers in a nine-game span.
Supersonic career starts like this are the best. Players popping up on our radar out of nowhere to set the world on fire from the batter’s box doesn’t happen that often. So when someone like 2016 Trevor Story or 2017 Rhys Hoskins or 2019 Aristides Aquino blasts onto the scene blasting baseballs into space, it’s a show to behold.
And White is doing it with the swagger and energy of someone well beyond his years. The vibe is impeccable: a teenager with a full neckbeard and flowing blonde hair and the energy of a mid-'90s rock god. Tommy Tanks looks like the only freshman in America with a 401(k).
He’s not fluking into these homers, either. Of his nine bombs, five have been to dead center field, and two each have gone to right and left. He’s not cheating on fastballs to try to yank one down the line. White is a great pure hitter who happens to hit a lot of homers thanks to elite exit velocities and incredible backspin like peak Albert Pujols.
In a moment when the world of Major League Baseball is gridlocked in a messy dispute over the new collective bargaining agreement, White’s jaw-dropping hot streak is a timely reminder that the sport itself is good, and the people who play it are still awe-inspiring, their athletic achievements worthy of our adoration. There’s little we as hardball fans can do right now but scream into the void and turn on an NC State game, hoping to see Tommy White launch a ball into the stratosphere.
Fortunately, he probably will.
Jake Mintz is the louder half of @CespedesBBQ and a baseball writer for FOX Sports. He’s an Orioles fan living in New York City, and thus, he leads a lonely existence most Octobers. If he’s not watching baseball, he’s almost certainly riding his bike. You can follow him on Twitter @Jake_Mintz.
