Jose Bautista is giving baseball its first 'wow' moment since the era of steroid testing began. Entering today's game against the Boston Red Sox, Bautista was one homer shy of becoming the first player in either league to hit 50 since Prince Fielder and Alex Rodriguez three seasons ago.
Can it be trusted? After BALCO and Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire, Bautista's near four-fold increase in home runs over last season's output is a topic of fascination and conjecture.
The stated reasons for the binge - starting his hands quicker at the plate, playing regularly at a homer-friendly home park, being encouraged by a homer-happy manager - are logical and defensible.
Yet the legacy of the steroid era is to automatically cloak unexpected power production in suspicion. If not steroids, the skepticism goes, then surely some other form of performance-enhancing drug is at work?
The power numbers are eye-popping. Bautista, 29, has reached 500 at-bats for the second time in his career.
The first time, in 2007 with the Pittsburgh Pirates, he hit 15 home runs; Friday night, he set the Toronto Blue Jays club record with 48 after hitting one in the Jays' win over the Boston Red Sox.
Before 2010, he had 59 career homers in 1,754 career at-bats, a ratio of one home run for every 29.7 at-bats; this season, that ratio is one homer for every 10.9 at-bats.
Two years ago, after the Blue Jays acquired him from the Pirates for Robinzon Diaz, Bautista didn't even have a guaranteed contract when he reported to spring training in Dunedin, Fla.
It's interesting to note now that, while Bautista hopes to sign a multiyear contract with the Blue Jays this off-season, GM Alex Anthopoulos isn't committing and may wait to see how Bautista starts next year, even though the 6-foot, 195-pound outfielder/third baseman can declare free agency at the end of the 2011 season.
"Thing is, I don't know how anybody can go off just one season and say 'Oh, that's what this player is,'" Anthopoulos said. "As an industry, we're not that good."
Bautista's sudden power surge looks hauntingly similar to Brady Anderson's fluke performance in 1996. Anderson hit 50 home runs for the Baltimore Orioles following a 16-homer output the previous season (although in 1995 Anderson had 554 at-bats, while Bautista hit 13 in only 336 at-bats last season). Anderson was not named in the Mitchell Report on steroid use, nor was he the subject of Congressional probing, but such aberrations from career performance these days send up a red flag.
Bautista first addressed the inevitable speculation about performance-enhancing drug usage in an interview with The Globe and Mail in July. At the time, he sounded prepared for the coming questions. Not surprisingly, he has handled them deftly.
"There's no room for suspicions, because we have a system of drug testing in place," Bautista said back then. "I have no worries, because I know who I am and I know how I do things."
Baseball tests for steroids, not human growth hormone. The first athlete in North America to be tested positively for HGH was a University of Waterloo football player recently.
The Pittsburgh Pirates drafted Bautista in the 20th round of the 2000 draft out of Chipola junior college in Florida, signing him to a reported $600,000 bonus. Bautista was taken in the December, 2003 Rule-5 draft by the Baltimore Orioles and he broke camp with them before the Tampa Bay Rays claimed him on waivers on June 3, 2004 - then traded him to the Kansas City Royals on June 28, who in turn traded him two days later to the New York Mets. The Mets promptly shipped him, Matt Peterson and Ty Wigginton (now with the Orioles) back to the Pirates for Kris Benson and Jeff Keppinger. During that span, he gathered fewer than 100 at-bats.
"He had a lot of tools - which is generally why you get a Rule 5 guy in the first place," said Terry Crowley, then and now the Orioles hitting coach. "He was a good fastball hitter back then, but as good a fastball hitter as you want to be, you still have to learn to at least be respectable on the breaking ball, or at least learn how to take it for a walk.
"Maturity has been kind to Jose in that way," he said.
The Blue Jays picked him up in a late-August trade two years ago and in Toronto, he's found stability for the first time in his career. What's more, in Cito Gaston he has a manager who gives power hitters his blessing to swing for the fences without fear of striking out.
Last year, then-hitting coach Gene Tenace, Gaston and first base coach/current hitting instructor Dwayne Murphy suggested Bautista change his approach at the plate. Repositioning his hands to initiate his swing earlier has, Bautista said, shaved 1.0 to 1.5 seconds off the time he starts and finishes his swing. The results came immediately, as he began hitting for more power last September.
"It's not like I've changed my swing," Bautista said in Baltimore, before tying Bell's mark on Wednesday. "But I get started now when the pitcher takes the ball out of his glove. Before, I was waiting until he started his arm motion. That time difference allows me to pick up the ball better, and from there it's just kind of avalanched."
Of the 41 50-homer seasons in baseball history, 23 have been registered in the last 15 years, also known as the steroid era. In the 60 years between the first of Babe Ruth's four 50-homer seasons in 1920 and Cecil Fielder's 51-homer season in 1990, just 11 different hitters were responsible for 18 50-homer years. In the 20 years since Fielder's 50-homer season, 14 different hitters have combined for the 23 50-plus years.
Every one of Bautista's homers have been pulled or hit to left-centre. He's produced no eye-rolling, opposite-field cheapies that characterized the steroid era. Bautista's shots are, in essence, line drives that clear the wall because the changes to his timing have given him more elevation. That is reflected by a fly-ball percentage of just under 55 per cent, or 10 percentage points higher than his career average.
You'd think the way around that would be to pitch the pull-conscious Bautista outside with breaking stuff - except Bautista has 93 walks, 24 more than his previous career high which was set in a season (2007) when he had 614 plate appearances, a similar total to what he has so far this season.
"What he's done," Gaston explained, "is taken this part of the plate [he motions out from his body about a foot and a half]and said: 'This part of the plate is mine. If you throw it here, I will swing at it.' "
Anthopoulos's eye tells him the mechanical reasons behind Bautista's surge makes sense. But he wonders about those home and road splits, which through Thursday had Bautista hitting 30 of his homers at the Rogers Centre compared to 17 on the road, and has a home batting average of .293, or 56 points about his road average.
"Maybe those numbers on the road are really him," Anthopoulos said.
It would be a stretch to say that Bautista sees himself as 'Employee No. 19.' But he has an acute sense of self and place and now he is just one homer away from 50.
As he signed autographs after batting practice in Baltimore this week, Bautista talked about his Rule 5 season: he was then 23 years old, lifted out of Single-A to the majors, given 96 plate appearances in 64 games, resulting in a .205 average and no homers. He actually had more homes than homers - three apartments and, lucky for him, a house in Tampa that he'd already purchased.
"For somebody in A-ball like I was, without a lot of experience, the Rule 5 experience can be hard," said Bautista. "The results weren't there for me, but I learned a lot of things. I got to see how guys went about their business, and how they really trusted their coaches and each other - how they used reports, video and all that stuff. They don't have video in the minors."
No longer a happy wanderer, Bautista is clear that he would like the people responsible for his Toronto comfort zone to be back in 2011, yet he knows that with Gaston retiring, Murphy could be part of any overhaul.
So Anthopoulos has a decision to make. To commit long-term, or risk Bautista leaving as a free agent after the 2011 season.
"Everyone says that we need to make a decision on Jose this off-season but I don't necessarily agree with that," Anthopoulos said. "I understand the sentiment, but we have him under contract for another year, plus there's spring training, the all-star break … there's time to get stuff done."
He has one year of salary arbitration left, and could triple this season's base salary of $2.4-million (U.S.) going into 2011. He will not play winter ball in the Dominican this season, breaking a string of nine previous seasons in the league.
"I don't think it would be the right time," he said. "I have to get my contract negotiations under way and I can't risk injury. I can't play around with that."
Last season, even after his 10-homer splurge in September, not a single team called Anthopoulos regarding a trade.
"All those Rule 5 teams, they all had their reasons for getting me, and they all had their reasons for letting me go," said Bautista. "I hold no grudge against any of them and I don't think any of them had any regrets for letting me go, at least not until this season.
" I mean, I'm just one person in an industry. I have never felt I was deserving of something special."
Said by a hitter within reach of a special mark - the 50-home run club.