Each Friday, Minor Matters will publish the Top Ten numbers from the season. These can be stats, players' numbers, whatever. As long as it's a number, it counts. The Thunder were just two wins from the Eastern League championship, so there's no shortage of material for this section.

No. 8 ...














What it means: The number of consecutive games in which Thunder catcher Austin Romine collected a hit, spanning from April 15 until May 7.

Why it's significant: After a brief early-season slump, caused partially by the cold weather, Romine began to bust out, and for those three weeks, he was nearly unstoppable. During that period, he went 26-for-67 (.388), with nine doubles, three home runs and 15 RBIs.

After that, however, he cooled significantly. He hit .252/.304/.671 the rest of the way, with seven bombs and 52 RBIs.

When it all shook out, though, Romine's .268/.324/.726 line is good but not spectacular for someone handling his first full season behind the plate. Thirty-one doubles, 10 home runs and 69 RBIs aren't anything to sneeze at, either.

Other Meanings: The number 17, for Romine, also represents the number of RBIs he had against left-handed pitching, the number of games he played in April and the number of times he struck out in July.

For the rest of the team, 17 could have stood for: Rene Rivera's RBIs and strikeouts, Marcos Vechionacci's doubles, Matt Cusick's runs scored, Austin Krum's doubles, Kevin Smith's walks, Hector Noesi's, George Kontos' and Noel Castillo's appearances, Ryan Pope's saves, Josh Schmidt's games finished or Manny Banuelos' strikeout total.