You couldn't have been blamed, one year ago, for having little awareness of a Blue Jays outfielder/infielder named Jose Bautista. Prior to last season, Bautista had played in 575 major-league games. He'd piled up roughly four seasons' worth of plate appearances. His career statistics included a .400 slugging percentage ... and that was probably the best thing Bautista had going for him.
Jose Bautista Making Believers Of Us All
In fact, one might reasonably have questioned Toronto management’s decision to give Bautista regular playing time last season. At 29, was he really going to hit like an every-day corner outfielder when he’d never done that before?
Well, he really did. In fact, he hit more in 2010 than almost every corner outfielder on the planet, leading the majors with 54 home runs and 351 total bases.
For which Bautista was rewarded by the Blue Jays with a five-year, $65 million contract. Which seemed like maybe a bit much for a (now) 30-year-old player with exactly one good (okay, great) season to his credit.
After last season (but before Bautista signed his new contract), Baseball Prospectus wrote:
It’s extraordinarily rare for a player to go from utility roster-froth to home-run champion, but that’s what Bautista did. He won’t hit 50 again, even if he maintains the improved plate discipline ... He has become a very good hitter, but if teams are smart, it could be May before he sees an inside fastball.
Maybe teams are stupid, or maybe Bautista’s really smart. Through 20 games this season, he’s been even better than last season, leading the league in homers again and walks, batting average, on-base percentage and slugging percentage. Last season, he was one of the 10 best players in the American League; this season he’s been simply the best.
Can he keep it up? Well, Bautista probably won’t finish the season with a .362 batting average. But as many have pointed out, he did make an adjustment toward the end of the 2009 season, and posted .257/.339/.606 line that September. So we’ve now got roughly eight months, spread over three seasons, suggesting that Bautista is, at the very least, one of the game’s premier power hitters.
Five years is a long time, and $65 million is still a fair amount of money. But 20 games into that contract, the Blue Jays sure aren’t looking stupid.
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