RealGM

Baseball fans from Toronto to here in a packed Target Field, and across the baseball world, are witnessing something more than a torrid hitting streak from Jose Bautista.

While Bautista's numbers are staggering these days — he homered in three consecutive at-bats in an 11-3 Jays win over the Twins Sunday — there is something of a historic perspective to the way Bautista is driving the ball out of parks so far this season.

...

“What makes him special is he lays off good pitcher's pitches and pitches that have action in the strike zone,” manager John Farrell said as his club won for a season-high fifth straight time and got back to .500 (20-20) for the first time since April 29. “He knows what he wants to do against every pitcher and he's getting his pitches. We all marvel at what he's doing. It's a pleasure to watch.”

...

“This is one of the hottest streaks I've ever had,” said Bautista, who is also hitting an AL-leading .368. “It's ridiculous, it feels like a dream and sometimes I can't believe it myself. But I gotta keep working on it.”

...

For more perspective, he hit five homers this weekend at Target Field, where the Twins have hit six all season. Bautista has seven homers at Target Field since it opened last year, more than Justin Morneau and Joe Mauer combined.

“You're seeing the greatest Blue Jay ever,” Adam Lind said.

...

“I don't know if I'd approach him,” said Jays starter Brandon Morrow, who picked up the win Sunday to improve to 2-2.

“They try to get under his bat and inside, but he puts the barrel on it … they try to go outside on him and he takes it the other way. I'm not sure what I'd do against him.”

“It's ridiculous, it feels like a dream right now,” Bautista said. “Sometimes I can't really believe it myself, but I keep seeing the good pitches.”

And he keeps hitting those pitches. Hard.

“I guess this one of the hottest streaks I've ever had in my life,” said Bautista, who led the majors with 54 homers last year. “I'm seeing the ball well and connecting good. Hopefully I can keep this going for a while.”

...

In the fourth, Bautista hit a line drive just inside the left field line off of reliever Kevin Slowey. Both homers were hit into a strong wind that was blowing in from left at more than 20 miles per hour.

...

Bautista has 11 multi-home run games since the beginning of the 2010 season and three this season. His recent surge has him ahead of last year's pace, when he reached 16 homers on May 30.

...

“He's turned himself into the best hitter in the game, as far as I'm concerned. It's pretty amazing,” Michael Cuddyer said. “Every single ball he hits, whether it's a foul ball or whatever, is right on the barrel. To me it looks like he's used one bat the whole season. It's unbelievable. Words can't describe what he looks like at the plate right now.”

...

After the game, Toronto activated IF Jayson Nix from the disabled list and optioned IF David Cooper to Triple-A Las Vegas.

He was not bragging. Jose Bautista sat in the Toronto Blue Jays dugout last week and said the team needed Adam Lind back in the lineup, but not because of the protection he’d provide Bautista in the batting order.

“What I do at the plate is about me,” he said.

What Bautista has done going into Monday’s first game of a two-game series against the Detroit Tigers is hit 16 home runs in 32 games. He’s missed eight of the Blue Jays games yet is still on pace to annihilate the club record for fastest 20 homers in a season – 53 games, set in 1987 by George Bell. How does Bautista’s season match up to some of the best in history?

— Barry Bonds hit his 20th homer in the San Francisco Giants’ 39th game (May 19) en route to setting the single-season homer record of 73 in 2001;

— Mark McGwire hit his 20th homer in the St. Louis Cardinals’ 43rd game (May 19) when he hit 70 homers in his head-to-head battle with Sammy Sosa in 1998. Sosa’s 20th that season came in the Chicago Cubs’ 62nd game, on June 7;

— Just for yucks: when Roger Maris set the American League record with 61 homers in 1961, his 20th wasn’t hit until June 11, in the New York Yankees’ 55th game.

Jose Bautista is in that zone that few get to enter. These days, he’s just not good, he’s goofy good.

...

“I’m just up there doing the same thing that I’ve been doing, just trying to get ready on time, see the ball well and look for something over the plate and try to hit it hard,” Bautista said. “I got plenty of pitches to do that this series.”

...

How much fun is he having?

“It’s ridiculous, I mean it feels like a dream right now and I sometimes can’t really believe it myself,” he said. “I’m just executing right now.”

Along the way, his confidence level is soaring.

“I feel pretty good right now,” he said. “You can’t help but feel good and confident when you’re hitting the ball like this and being that successful. I definitely feel like I’m on time and I can pretty much see the ball from any pitcher right now so I just got to stay where I am.”

Adam Lind, who has missed the past seven games because of pain in his lower back, had been told he will not play in Monday night’s opening game in Detroit also. The news came as a surprise to Lind who went through a series of drills and test during Sunday’s game, passed them all and felt no additional pain.
“I’m a little disappointed,” Lind said. “I went hard today.”

...

“To sit and watch the team win without you is a good thing I guess,” he said.

Perhaps no player has exploded from relative obscurity into superstardom like Jose Bautista has over the past year. It's been just under three months since the Blue Jays took a bold step by locking up last year's home run champ for five years and $65MM, but it certainly looks like it's going to pay off.

...

Had Bautista reached free agency following this season, as he was projected to, he could have conceivably tried to exceed the seven-year contracts signed by Jayson Werth ($126MM) and Carl Crawford ($142MM) this past offseason. After all, he and agent Bean Stringfellow could point out that Werth only had three strong seasons prior to inking his deal. Bautista also doesn't have Werth's injury history, and offers the versatility of appearing at third base or in the outfield. And, assuming a 50 HR campaign for Bautista this year, they could argue that he hit as many homers from 2010-11 as Crawford had in his whole career when he signed his contract. At the bare minimum, he'd have commanded $20MM or more per season for five years or more.

Bautista's annual salary of $14MM from 2012 on is less than that of fellow outfielders Torii Hunter, Vernon Wells, Jason Bay, and Alfonso Soriano (to name a few). The total value of his deal exceeds Aaron Rowand's contract by just $4MM over the same number of guaranteed years.

Only 19 entire teams in the league have a higher total WAR than Bautista does, and if you take away his contribution from the Blue Jays, it becomes 18.

Right now, 34% of his plate appearances have ended in either a walk or a home run. Of the 193 qualified batters in the Major Leagues, Bautista would rank 80th in on base percentage based only on his walks and home runs. That’s not counting the 29 hits he’s gotten that haven’t gone for home runs, which make his OBP of .520, 50 points higher than the next closest player, Joey Votto.

Perhaps most impressive to me is that right now, with two strikes, Bautista has an OPS of 1.122, and even in the 26 plate appearances in which a pitcher has gotten ahead in the count 0-2, he still has an OPS of 1.203. It’s utter and pure dominance.

Let this roll around your noggin for a few moments, and consider it for all it's worth, and from every angle: Noted slugger John McDonald (pictured above) now has more home runs this season than Travis Snider, Aaron Hill and Edwin Encarnacion...combined.

youngLion wrote:It's too bad about Lind missing another game. It looks like they should have put him on the DL in the first place.

LittleOzzy wrote:A) Who is the Realgm girl?

B) Thanks for the papers.