RealGM

Among the most talked about story lines heading into the 2011 season, few generated as much interest as Jose Bautista‘s attempt to follow up on his monstrous season from last year. The universal consensus was that he would take a step backward, as it was a given he wouldn’t hit 54 home runs again, but the question was just how far back would he go? Perhaps it’s time to change the question.

Bautista’s ridiculous start to the season – he’s now hitting .359/.506/.750, good for a Major League best .533 wOBA after making just two outs over the course of the three games against the Rays this weekend – has effectively ended any legitimate speculation about whether Bautista’s season was an enormous outlier. He is still doing all of the things that made him so good last year, only now he’s proving that he can do it while hardly seeing any pitches in the strike zone, and his patience has upped his walk rate to elite levels as well.

So, instead of asking just how far Bautista will regress, perhaps the more relevant question now is whether or not Bautista is currently the best hitter in the American League. It’s a question that would have seemed ludicrous 12 months ago, but what Bautista has done since – and done consistently – while adjusting to a changing approach from opposing pitchers has made this a legitimate query.

Perhaps the best place to start when answering questions of this nature are the updated ZIPS projections we have here on the site, courtesy of Dan Szymborski. Not surprisingly, the consistent excellence of Albert Pujols still has him on top, though Joey Votto is making a hard charge at the title for best hitter in the National League. After those two, however, there are three AL hitters whose projected lines for the rest of the season are all pretty similar:

Avenger wrote:I'd say it comes down to him vs Cabrera, everyone else is probably a distant third

Randle McMurphy wrote:He's been better than every hitter in the AL over the last 8 months of baseball, so yeah, he is.

Randle McMurphy wrote:#1. Hamilton isn't even playing right now.
#2. Hamilton has a career walk rate of 8.4% (7.5% last year), he's like a left-handed Ryan Braun (with way better defense, of course). Not good enough to be called the best hitter in any league.

evilRyu wrote:the dude is totally locked in.. last year people were saying his BA was keeping him away from MVP talks. This is just amazing, Last year was his highest BA at .260, and he's currently 100 points higher.

Randle McMurphy wrote:You mean Miguel Cabrera, not Melky. Melky deserves no respect, I'll always hate him for hitting a 300 foot HR off Halladay and reacting as if it was the biggest hit of all time.

MGD24 wrote:

Randle McMurphy wrote:You mean Miguel Cabrera, not Melky. Melky deserves no respect, I'll always hate him for hitting a 300 foot HR off Halladay and reacting as if it was the biggest hit of all time.

lol well it probably was, and will be, the biggest hit of his career