Ordinarily in baseball, there's only so much insight you can glean from a spring training ritual as momentous as Photo Day.
But in the case of those 2011 Toronto Blue Jays, we'll make an exception.
For just about everybody else on this "Who are these guys?" kind of roster -- for Travis Snider, for Octavio Dotel, for even the manager, John Farrell -- the Photo Day duties consisted of a pose here, a snap there and see ya later.
But not for Jose Bautista.
He stood. He kneeled. He swung the bat. He waggled the bat. He smiled. He glared. He did everything but pose for the Sports Illustrated swimsuit cover.
When the Blue Jays look at Jose Bautista, they don't see the same player who changed teams six times in 4½ years from 2003 to '08 and had never once, before last season, compiled an adjusted OPS+ equal to that of even an average player (i.e., 100). They see a player who has completely rebuilt his swing and figured it out. And they're remarkably confident that's the player they're going to get -- this year and beyond.
"He knows he can go up there and hit," Blue Jays hitting coach Dwayne Murphy said. "He knows what he can do. The swing that he worked on so long and so much, it's just second nature to him. But the biggest thing is confidence. He's full of confidence. So do I think he can do it again? I do. He's ready to carry the load."
No one, including Bautista, is defining "carrying the load" as "he'll hit 54 homers again." But the Blue Jays are NOT alone in projecting he can hit 30-plus again.
If last season had really been a fluke for Jose Bautista, would he really have kept driving those baseballs deep into the night right through September? Really? We remind you, this is the information age. So if a hitter has holes, somebody finds them. If the scouts don't, those holes show up on the video or the computer screens. But they always show up. Always.
http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/spring201 ... BHeadlines
Very long article but well worth the read.
