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http://www.tsn.ca/blogs/scott_macarthur/?id=450517

TORONTO - Manager John Gibbons and Jose Bautista have differing opinions about the star player's bizarre decision to attempt a steal of third base with the Blue Jays down 5-0 in the fourth inning of Friday night's loss to the Red Sox.

"I've got no idea," said Gibbons after the game when asked what Bautista was thinking. "It's not smart, winning baseball and I'm sure he won't do it again."

Talking through his thought process, if you completely ignored the situation, Bautista makes sense.

"I thought I had a pretty good idea that the pitch was going to be a breaking ball and I also know that the catcher's not the best catch-and-throw catcher in the league," said Bautista. "Maybe my lead wasn't that big. Maybe I didn't get off to a great running start. But I thought it was a great opportunity for us to get two runners in scoring position with less than two outs."

The argument is solid, if you're ignoring the situation, except Encarnacion clearly wasn't prepared. He didn't break for second when Bautista took off for third.

"I wasn't thinking about (stealing) the whole at-bat," said Bautista. "It was just something that kind of just came about. I noticed the situation. I didn't see it building up to the situation or I would have given Eddie a sign that he and I have. But I stumbled upon the thought of it and didn't get a chance to give that sign to him."

In my opinion, I actually liked what Bautista did there. Too often the opposition pitchers know the Jays aren't stealing, so the threat of a steal doesn't weigh on the pitchers minds. The batters see less fastballs, and as a whole, the Jays usually don't manufacture runs.

This is on Jose a little bit for not getting the right sign, however, the thought of a steal, or even a double steal would've been huge had the Jays been able to pull it off.

Gibbons hates the move, meanwhile, Bautista regrets not making it to third, but doesn't regret being active on the basepaths.

I've said it a million times, you have to be unpredictable in the game of baseball and the Jays this season have been far too predictable.

Only Jonathan Diaz and Anthony Gose have attempted a bunt. 3/4 of the Jays batters face a shift and don't bother going the other way, and lastly, the Jays remain motionless on the basepaths, which likely leads to their atrocious avg with RISP.

Fire Gibbons before the season is over before May...this is getting to be a joke. Fire Pete "BB" Walker while were at it.

Only Jonathan Diaz and Anthony Gose have attempted a bunt.

Only Diaz and Gose have succeeded in bunting. Several others players have tried, including Rasmus in the night inning tonight, when he failed rather badly in a rash attempt to bunt, leaving him with two strikes against perhaps the most devastating two-strike reliever in baseball.

Schadenfreude wrote:

Only Jonathan Diaz and Anthony Gose have attempted a bunt.

Only Diaz and Gose have succeeded in bunting. Several others players have tried, including Rasmus in the night inning tonight, when he failed rather badly in a rash attempt to bunt, leaving him with two strikes against perhaps the most devastating two-strike reliever in baseball.

Yeah, Kawasaki too...but the reality of the situation is the Jays don't manufacture runs, they try to produce them with the HR...which they are pretty good at.

The glaring stat I find with the hitters has always been OBP. After Navarro, Rasmus, Lawrie, Sierra and Goins today...your 6,7,8,9 hitters all had OBP under .230, Reyes is under .250 at the top of the order.

Relying on Melky, Jose, Edwin, Franky/Lind and Navarro is great and all, but the 6-9 and lead off hitters should be running far more since they struggle to get on base.

Rasmus given his terrible batting avg. and his propensity to pull the ball should look to bunt it far more often than he does...all he has to do is get the bunt down towards 3rd and he can walk to first base. He does have power, but at some point you have to say to yourself...we need a base runner...lets try something different and make them pay for playing this alignment.

It's just lazy managing and it bugs the hell out of me.

I won't get into Gibbons' faith in his starters and relievers...which is another reason why the Jays are trending downwards this year.

jalenrose#5 wrote:Rasmus given his terrible batting avg. and his propensity to pull the ball should look to bunt it far more often than he does...all he has to do is get the bunt down towards 3rd and he can walk to first base. He does have power, but at some point you have to say to yourself...we need a base runner...lets try something different and make them pay for playing this alignment.

It's just lazy managing and it bugs the hell out of me.

I won't get into Gibbons' faith in his starters and relievers...which is another reason why the Jays are trending downwards this year.

Rasmus is a horrifically bad bunter. Also, managers don't ask players to bunt for base hit, ever. Players determine that. The only time managers intercede is asking for a player to bunt a runner over, and we shouldn't be asking Rasmus to do that because he is a horrifically bad bunter.

Bunting and running into outs is dumb managing and I'm glad Gibbons is one of the few managers in baseball not into such nonsense.

Bautista made a one-off mistake (the reward in this scenario doesn't make up for the risk), but unsurprisingly he has too much pride to admit it. It's not exactly a big deal, though.

for someone who's always had great awareness on the basepaths, i'm kind of disappointed that bautista has already run into three lackadaisical, totally avoidable outs this season when he was already in scoring position

The Jays were down 5 runs. There's no reason at all to even attempt that. It was a stupid mistake and he should just admit he was wrong instead of trying to give an excuse. It's a bad example to the players on the team just like his complaining about balls and strikes. Soon everyone will be running the Jays out of innings.