How the league should adjust to Thames

Whenever a batter breaks into the big leagues, a pitcher's plan of attack can get a little more complicated - relying on what he's done in the minors and the pitcher's own strengths. But Eric Thames presents an extremely interesting case, and the correction has to come quickly.

During Wednesday's game against the Chicago Cubs, Mike Montgomery was tasked with facing the white-hot Thames - boaster of six home runs over his last seven games - in the sixth inning with the bases loaded. And, by the looks of things, Montgomery had a plan:

According to Brooks Baseball, that fits Montgomery's modus operandi. Although, in the small sample size of this year, it looks like Montgomery is lucky to have made it out of that at-bat without coughing up the grand slam:

To be clear, on pitches at the belt or lower and in the strikezone through Thames' 13 games, when the Milwaukee Brewers' first baseman puts them into play they leave the yard nearly 24 percent of the time.

Of course, there are other factors conflating this. That Montgomery is a lefty and Thames bats from that side of the plate, for instance, likely weighed on the Cubs pitcher's mind that he could stay effective using only his own strengths. However, over the very, very small sample of this season, Thames is actually hitting lefties better.

But there seems to be an early way to exploit the National League leader in home runs, and it's the exact opposite of Montgomery's approach. From Brooks Baseball again, here's Thames' whiff rate:

As we know from the HR/BIP zone profile from before, none of Thames' seven home runs this year have come from pitches up in the zone. Now consider the fact that Thames appears to whiff the most at pitches up in the zone - save for the one spot below the strikezone and away.

That spot too should be exploited, though a friendly reminder to pitchers that choose to go there: Thames has a .667 ISO on pitches in the zone just above that, so the margin for error is slim. Meanwhile, of the 10 pitches above the belt that Thames has put into play through his first 13 games, he has just one extra-base hit.

There is nothing to say that Thames won't make a correction if the league gets wise to this trend - in fact, the slugger may actually feast on pitches up in the zone.

Some food for thought though: During Thames' first tour through the majors from 2011-2012, he seemed to specifically struggle against pitches up in the zone then, too.

For Thames, a hot start like this likely means a correction is on its way. It just becomes about how the 2015 MVP of the Korea Baseball Organization will respond.