Allen Thomas reflects on son Alek’s World Series run with Diamondbacks

Alek Thomas has yet to play a full season of Major League Baseball, but he has appeared in a total of 231 games for the Arizona Diamondbacks over the past two regular seasons. 

Not only that, but he has already played on the game’s biggest stage, having started in center field during every game of the 2023 World Series against the Texas Rangers. Although Arizona lost the best-of-seven series in five games, the 23-year-old Morganton native showed off his offensive and defensive skills during the D-backs’ playoff run, starting 14 times and playing in all 17 games.

Thomas’ father, Allen, was there for the entire journey. A four-sport star (baseball, football, basketball, and track) at Freedom High School in the late 1980s and early 1990s, he attended all of the D-backs’ postseason games this year.

Arizona finished 84-78 during the regular season, finishing a game ahead of the Chicago Cubs for the final wild-card spot in the National League. The D-backs actually lost their final four games entering the playoffs, so they were hardly on a hot streak to begin the month of October.

Nevertheless, the D-backs swept the Milwaukee Brewers in a best-of-three NL Wild Card Series to start the postseason before also sweeping the Los Angeles Dodgers in a best-of-five NL Division Series and erasing a 3-2 series deficit to outlast the Philadelphia Phillies in the best-of-seven NL Championship Series. Those series victories earned Arizona a spot in its first Fall Classic since 2001, when the D-backs captured the franchise’s only World Series title.

“They had things going early in the season, and it was like, all right, you can see the glimpse of them being really good,” said Allen Thomas of the D-backs. “... And then obviously in the middle of the season they had little lulls and stuff like that. But the maturation process to see where they’re at at that point to getting out of the rut they were in mid to late part of the season, and then the lightbulb coming back on, that was pretty awesome to see.”

Thomas discussed each ballpark’s playoff atmosphere, stating that fans of the Brewers, Dodgers, and Phillies were a little shell-shocked by how the D-backs performed in the playoffs. And while Arizona finished 20th out of 30 MLB teams in home attendance during the regular season with an average of 24,212 fans, Chase Field averaged more than 48,000 fans during the D-backs’ seven home playoff contests.

“The Diamondbacks’ stadium was awesome,” said Thomas, who added that during the regular season, Chase Field was typically only packed if a club like the Dodgers was in town, and even then there would often be more Los Angeles fans than Arizona supporters. But when the Dodgers visited in the playoffs, their fans were “overpowered by D-backs fans, so that was exciting.”

Alek Thomas had 12 hits during the playoffs, including three two-hit performances. He also walked four times, stole two bases, and hit a franchise-record four home runs, including a pinch-hit, game-tying two-run homer off Phillies relief pitcher Craig Kimbrel in the eighth inning of Game 4 of the NLCS, a game Arizona won by a 6-5 final. 

During the 2023 regular season, he batted .230 with 86 hits, including 17 doubles, five triples, and nine homers. He also had 39 RBIs and scored 51 runs while stealing nine bases in 10 attempts, and he was a Gold Glove Award finalist.

Allen Thomas discussed the ups and downs his son has gone through since he was drafted by the D-backs in 2018, including several stints in the minor leagues. In fact, after struggling early in the 2023 season, he was sent down to the Triple-A Reno (Nev.) Aces for about a month before returning to the big leagues.

“I think he ran into some bad luck where he was hitting a whole lot of line drives right at people, left-handed or right-handed pitching, but got into a slump and had to go back down and reset things,” said Thomas. “So that cost him another 20-some days, and really as a hitter you’re looking to get over 500 at-bats … so I’m just hoping that he gets an opportunity next year to play a full season and grind through some things when things aren’t going well versus them sending him down to try and figure it out.

“Those guys are young, they have to learn the big leagues at some point, and I just think he’s earned himself that opportunity by what he did in the playoffs. But that’s day-to-day in the big leagues. There’s always bigger, better, faster athletes coming, so he’s gonna have to work this offseason to continue to be more consistent, and I think he’ll get that opportunity.”

The elder Thomas knows the grind of being a professional baseball player all too well. After playing at Wingate University, he was drafted by the Chicago White Sox in 1996 and sent to the Single-A Hickory Crawdads of the South Atlantic League. He also played for the Crawdads in 1997 and made a couple of other minor league stops before deciding to end his playing career, although he remained in the White Sox organization as strength and conditioning coach through the 2021 season, even receiving a World Series ring when the team won it all in 2005. 

These days, he is the director of player performance and development for iD Evolution, a baseball and softball training organization based in Arizona.

Given his father’s profession, Alek Thomas was around a major league clubhouse for much of his childhood. Plus, he played baseball, basketball, and football at Mount Carmel High School in Chicago after moving there from Morganton when he was 12. Additionally, he comes from a family full of athletes.

“Alek naturally grew up in a major league setting, so he didn’t know anything different and he happened to have an opportunity to be with me a lot,” said Allen Thomas. “So with the White Sox allowing him to be in the clubhouse and stuff like that for the most part, I think the apple of his eye was just obviously baseball, but he really excelled at all the sports.”

According to Thomas, he and his family still consider Morganton to be home.

“We think the world of that town and what it gave us … but work took us away,” he said. “But it’s pretty cool to see a kid from Morganton come out and be in a World Series. That doesn’t happen every day.”

Former Crawdads earn World Series rings 

Now the High-A affiliate of the Rangers, the Crawdads were well-represented in the World Series. According to Hickory general manager Douglas Locascio, by the end of the Fall Classic, there were a total of 14 former Crawdads on the club’s official roster, including nine players, two coaches, two trainers, and the Rangers’ GM.

“It’s been great to be a part (of the journey) and to see these guys succeed,” said Locascio, who attended Games 1 and 2 of the World Series in Arlington, Texas, with his son after also going to Games 3, 4, and 5 of the ALCS. “The atmosphere was incredible – I mean, 42,000 loud, screaming fans just at the top of their lungs. It was breathtaking, it was an amazing experience, and one I’m fortunate and glad to be a part of.”

Left fielder Evan Carter, a 21-year-old who reached base in all 17 of the Rangers’ playoff games, “was manning the Hickory outfield in August of 2022” and didn’t make his major league debut until September of this year. And 25-year-old third baseman Josh Jung, who played 40 games for the Crawdads in 2019 after being drafted eighth overall, first made it to the big leagues last year but was still considered a rookie this season, when he became the first Texas rookie to start an All-Star Game.

Furthermore, the Rangers’ first base coach is Hickory’s all-time winningest manager, Corey Ragsdale, and their third base coach is another former Crawdads manager, Tony Beasley. Ragsdale managed the Crawdads from 2013-15, posting an overall record of 237-179 and guiding them to the 2015 South Atlantic League championship, while Beasley managed them during the 2002 and 2003 seasons, the first of which ended in the team’s first SAL title.

Jose Leclerc, who closed games for the Rangers in the playoffs, is the longest tenured member of Texas’ roster. The 29-year-old right-hander pitched for the Crawdads in 2013.

Other members of the Rangers’ World Series roster who previously played for the Crawdads included center fielder Leody Taveras, infielder Josh Smith, utility player Ezequiel Duran (injury replacement for Adolis Garcia for Games 4 and 5), and pitchers Cody Bradford, Martin Perez, and Brock Burke (injury replacement for Max Scherzer for Games 4 and 5). 

In addition to trainers Sean Fields and Jacob Newburn, Texas GM Chris Young – who pitched in MLB for 13 years with the Rangers, San Diego Padres, New York Mets, Seattle Mariners, and Kansas City Royals – also spent time with the Crawdads in 2001 and 2002. In fact, Young was a member of Hickory’s 2002 SAL-title winning pitching staff.

Locascio said “it’s incredible” how quickly Young and the Rangers were able to turn things around after losing 102 games in 2021 and 94 in 2022. 

“The player development is a huge priority with that and just stands out a lot, and just everything that went into it,” he said. “... It’s a mixture of free agency and development and everything of that nature, and just to see it all come together and them all clicking is definitely a unique and special experience to be a part of.”

Josh McKinney can be reached at 828-445-8595 or josh@thepaper.media.