RealGM

Since September of last season Baustista leads the majors with 23 home runs. That is 23 home runs over 266 at-bats, or one home run every 11.6 at bats. If you project that home run pace over a little under a full season as an everyday player...say 600 at bats; you get 51.8 home runs. Project it over 650 at bats? 56 home runs.

This is a sustained sample of 3 months that goes back to the month Bautista got a chance to be an everyday player. Strike another one up for JP Ricciardi?

His full split stats from Sept 7th, when his power surge started, through tonight:

255 at-bats: .255/.347/.596 (.943 OPS) 23 HRs. That's 341 points iso power over a fairly large sample size. Babe Ruth's all-time record in career iso power? 348.

So over the course of half a season, Jose Bautista has slugged like Babe Ruth.

Instead of getting Bonds, JP clearly got the next best thing.

Considering Bautista's career high in home runs is 16 (400 AB in 2006) and highest OPS in a season was .757, I would say it is either a really, really big hot streak or he is on the juice. Obviously he'll end up with a career year this season at the rate he is going, but someone who never had an ISO touch .200 in a season now having a .325 ISO at age 29 strikes me as an outlier. A very interesting one given what Schad pointed out, but one nonetheless. Bautista is definitely chartering insane territory since September of last season.

Although, the last time the Jays were belting HR's at a record pace was 2000, and Cito was hitting coach that year, so maybe that has something to do with Bautista's power increase and maybe he'll hit for more power moving forward, but if he keeps hitting this well (not only HR's but performance in general) past 2010 I'll eat my keyboard.

I was going to say this was a FA year for him, but Cot's says he only has 4+ years of service, so it's not even a contract year for him. Maybe be good trade bait since he'll have an arbitration year left.

Part of it is definitely good fortune, but he has also clearly reworked his swing. It's not simply that flyballs are traveling further, he's getting a tonne of loft; his FB rate is now at 50.8%, eighth-highest in the bigs, which is a significant departure from his career 43.5% rate. Observationally, his swing is far more 'handsy' than before...he's keeping his front side closed and essentially using his plant foot as a pivot to hook the ball, getting all of his power from the quickness of his bat and the torque generated rather than getting it from his lower body. I can't believe that it has come to this, but a frame-by-frame of his HR last night:





It's all hips and hands...no drive with the legs whatsoever. His front leg serves as a pivot, and the back leg is taking the play off entirely.


Further evidence: the semi-useless spray charts on MLB.com, which only allow you to look at one park at a time. Still, looking at the data for the Skydome shows the difference in his approach.

2009:



He was an equal opportunity groundout threat with a bit of a pull tendency, and his singles distribution indicates that when he did turn on the ball, it was usually a hard grounder or low line drive in front of the left fielder. Conversely, the vast majority of the flyballs went to center or right, to such an extreme that he rarely ever pulled a ball in the air.


2010:



He does still hit some flyballs (usually pitches on the outside corner) the opposite field, typically with that choppy, inside-out swing that lifts them harmlessly to the CF or RF. But when the ball is inside, he's turning around on everything...he's either getting loft and hooking pitches into the seats, or he's hitting it at the shortstop and third baseman. I can't post it owing to the aforementioned dickishness of MLB.com, but it seems to hold outside of the Dome as well; Bautista has suddenly decided that he's a pure pull hitter to a degree that puts Aaron Hill to shame.


Heh, kinda reminds me of the last out-of-nowhere, scrub-turned-masher we had...the other Ba(u)tista at third, Tony, also known as the worst 40 HR hitter of all-time (a 102 OPS+ that year, for ****'s sake). Of course, he was always a dead-pull hitter unlike Jose, and the memory of his swing set-up makes me shudder, but he did it in the same way: he got his lower half the **** out of the equation by any means necessary, and just tried to hook everything inside the pole. Jose has better pitch recognition, bat control, and less moving parts, so it's possible that he can actually remain a semi-productive hitter while doing so; whereas Tony became useless the moment teams realized that they could just loop in breaking pitches a foot off the outside corner and watch him try to turn on them, Jose has a good enough eye to wait for something middle-in. He still won't keep up the current pace, but there's enough there to think that he might not turn back into a pumpkin come June.

Well, two things have changed when it comes to Bautista:

1. He's playing every day, which can be a big psychological boost.
2. As Schad points out, he and Cito re-worked his spring last fall, and it's clearly a major improvement.

Not only has he been smoking in the regular season, we can't forget he was a beast in spring training, too. Actually, he got off to a pretty slow start in the regular season, but has been beasting ever since.

The Jays are in a really tough spot here when Snider gets healthy again. They have four guys in Lind, Snider, Bautista and Encarnacion vying for three spots (3B, RF, and DH). Which one do you sit?

Lind has the big paycheque and long contract, so you expect he gets regular duty despite his early season struggles. Snider is the future and was on a tear before the injury, so you'd like to see him get regular at-bats. So who do you bench? The guy that just hit three home runs in the game, or the guy that leads your team in HR and RBI? Wow! Who could have seen that dilemma coming before the season started?

At this point, I'd have to sit Encarnacion. Bautista has been a beast for half a season going back to last September, and you have to see just what you have in him over a longer sample size. Wouldn't it be something if this team's lack of minor-league 3B prospects turns out to be a non-issue?

And BTW, he doesn't *appear* to be juicing. I don't see obvious signs of steroid use (e.g. swollen-looking neck). And most of his home runs aren't clearing the fence by 100 feet. He's making excellent contact and hitting line-drive shots.

He also seems, by various second-hand accounts, to be a good character guy, so you'd think that would make him less likely to juice.

Sportsnet just had a Jays commercial for tonight's game indicating "Jose Bautista and the Jays take on Justin Upton and the Diamondbacks". Therefore it must be real.

I think Schad has it right with his swing mechanics. Baseball is weird like that, because a little tweak here and there can suddenly turn ones fortunes around quite drastically.

I too have noticed his all in the hips mechanics. He crushes inside fastballs because he rotates his hips so well and pitchers stupidly keep pitching him there. HitTracker (http://www.hittrackeronline.com/) says he has 4 no doubt HRs, 5 just enoughs, 4 plenty, and 0 lucky, which isn't the profile of a lucky HR hitter. He has also been accused of hitting them off crappy pitchers (looking at you GROF) but look at the list: http://www.hittrackeronline.com/detail. ... ype=hitter. Some pretty good ones there. We've seen players sustain HR/FB outliers through a whole season so I don't see why he can't end up with 25 HRs.

I'd forgotten all about that site...five of the twelve players in AL with 3+ no-doubt HRs are Jays, plus another three of the 16 at two no-doubters.

Let's imagine that Bautista tails off slightly, but continues to be a good, relatively consistant power hitter. What could he bring back in a trade?

Lateral Quicks wrote:And BTW, he doesn't *appear* to be juicing. I don't see obvious signs of steroid use (e.g. swollen-looking neck). And most of his home runs aren't clearing the fence by 100 feet. He's making excellent contact and hitting line-drive shots.

He also seems, by various second-hand accounts, to be a good character guy, so you'd think that would make him less likely to juice.

Because "good character guys" would never take steroids to prolong their mediocre major league careers to help their families? Does that make Randy Ruiz a "poor character guy?"

Now, I'm not saying Bow is on 'roids, but I would have thought people realized by now that users come in all shapes and sizes and attempting to pin a certain type on them based on appearances is a waste of time.

Note I said "less likely". I'm sure there are plenty of good locker-room guys who are on the juice.

Some really great analysis here..

Remember as well, he was absolutely mashing it in spring, and then got ff to a relatively slow start. His last few weeks have likewise been monstrous, and if you factor in spring training (and I'm not advising you do...) his sample size increases a bit...

He must be on steroids.

Buster Olney's blog today"

So quite literally, Bautista started his swing sooner. Until that point in his career, Bautista began his swing mechanics -- the lift of his front foot, the cocking of his hands -- as the opposing pitcher drew his pitching arm through his motion. What Bautista began to do is start his hitting mechanics just as the pitcher started: Bautista began lifting his front foot as the pitcher's motion began, as if in sync.

The benefit did not come immediately. The whole thing felt awkward, and Bautista struggled to feel comfortable. "I had some days when I felt even worse," said Bautista.

In the month of July of 2009, Bautista had one homer and four RBI, playing semi-regularly; he didn't hit any homers in August, in 54 at-bats. But on Sept. 10, 2009, Bautista smashed a double and a homer, and felt much better; soon, he could not imagine how he had ever hit with his old swing.

Bautista has been mashing fastballs ever since. Justin Havens of ESPN Stats & Information dug this out. The most home runs in hit by anyone in the majors since Sept. 7, 2009:

Jose Bautista: 24
Dan Uggla: 18
Paul Konerko: 17

Is this real life?

So... he's legit? Wow... I know its too soon, or maybe jumping a little ahead of myself but it reminds me of when McGuire and Sosa were racing for the HR record and I would check every day expecting to see that each had hit a homer... Its like that now with Jose! I just flipped the channel and I see the replay of him hitting yet another homer... Wow!

Who else picked up him up on their fantasy team? What a steal