TAMPA, Fla. – The other day, one of Bill Chuck’s “Nine to Know” e-mail messages popped into my mailbox, and Fact No. 3 seemed too crazy, too outrageous, to be true. But it was.

No player with 100 career home runs has fewer at-bats than Marcus Thames, who last month signed a minor league deal with the Yankees. It took Thames, who has 101 homers, 1,549 at-bats. Next on the list is Ryan Braun (1,697), while Ken Phelps (1,854), Morgan Ensberg (2,204) and Bob Cerv (2,261) round out the top five, according to Baseball-Reference.com.

Thames, of course, got off to a great start, clubbing a home run off Randy Johnson on the very first pitch of his very first major league at-bat, on June 10, 2002. Over his career, Thames has averaged one home run every 15.3 at-bats, which would rank as the seventh-best ratio among active players and 20th-best all time – if Thames had the requisite 3,000 qualifying plate appearances. He has only 1,709.