Hard Work Brings Athletics’ Colby Thomas To Cusp Of MLB Debut
It doesn’t take long to notice Colby Thomas’ competitive edge on defense. His football background factors into that.
The 24-year-old corner outfielder is perhaps a little too aggressive in certain aspects. He admits to being undefeated making contact against the outfield wall as he makes plays.
The play-hard mentality is the one characteristic brought up repeatedly when describing Thomas.
Last season across Double-A Midland and Triple-A Las Vegas, he made an impression at the plate. He wanted to improve his power after being doubles-heavy in 2023.
He did just that in a 2024 season that culminated in Thomas being recognized as the organization’s minor league player of the year after hitting .277/.342/.563 with 31 home runs and 15 stolen bases in 132 games.
Coming out of spring a year ago, he also improved his bat-to-ball skills, which the Athletics organization takes pride in improving.
Thomas stuck out nearly 25% of the time in 2024, but that was down a tick from the year prior. The organization appears unfazed and expects him to compete for big league time this season.
“Colby’s a competitor and wants to do well and wants to get to the big leagues,” A’s farm director Ed Sprague said.”And I think he knows that one of his things is to cut down a little bit on the swing-and-miss and the strikeouts. He takes a pretty healthy cut at it.”
That comes with the incline in power for the 2022 third-rounder out of Mercer.
“You first look at him, you look at the home run power. But I think defensively he’s really good and he’s an above-average runner,” Sprague said.
Thomas credits machine work last season for those improved numbers, which will help in his expectations heading into camp as he gets a look in front of the major league staff.
