From Popgun Hitter to Powerhouse
Jose Bautista Sets Record for Biggest Increase in Home Runs.
Going into the 2010 season, Jose Bautista was not much more than a borderline major league starter, more valuable for his defensive versatility than for his hitting skills. After all, he had played every position except shortstop, pitcher and catcher, and his best single-season home run total was 16, with the Pittsburgh Pirates in 2005. His career on-base plus slugging percentage, or O.P.S., was a pedestrian .729 — more Skip Schumacher than Albert Pujols.
Fast-forward six months, though, and Bautista is putting the finishing touches on a brilliant offensive season: through Wednesday, he was one of only five major league players to post an O.P.S. of 1.000 or better. His 52 home runs lead all major leaguers, and by a large margin. Pujols, the three-time most valuable player, had 42 through Wednesday.
Given the time left in the schedule, Bautista will almost certainly finish as the only player to hit 50 home runs this season.
For someone whose previous statistics suggested a below-average hitter with modest power at best, the improvement is shocking. Already, Bautista has taken a place in baseball’s record books. Among those with at least 400 plate appearances the season before, Bautista is the only player to improve his home run total by 39 from one year to the next. The old record, 38, was held by the Atlanta Braves’ Davey Johnson after he jumped to 43 home runs in 1973 from 5 the year before.
Bautista is also the only player with 2,000 previous plate appearances to increase his top single-season home run output by 30 or more, with 36. That shatters the record held by Brady Anderson, who in 1996 hit 29 more home runs than his previous high.
But along with the cheers are coming raised eyebrows over his performance. Five of the six players just below Bautista on the list of biggest career-best home run improvements did it during the late 1990s or early 2000s, the so-called steroid era when offensive production soared.
Last month, the Toronto Star columnist Damien Cox set off a controversy in a blog post by urging reporters to ask Bautista about drug use.
When asked about the post later, Bautista told reporters: “I don’t really care, I mean, people are going to write what they have to write, they have a job to do.”
He added: “I don’t really know why he wrote what he wrote, but I’m sure he had a reason. He didn’t feel like he needed to talk to me. That’s fine with me. I don’t know what was said. But it doesn’t bother me. It doesn’t change anything about me or who I am or what I’ve accomplished.”
Hitters improve for many reasons; from a sabermetric standpoint, they peak between the ages of 26 and 30 (Bautista is 29). But with increasing awareness of the influence of performance-enhancing drugs in baseball, turnarounds like Bautista’s now prompt skepticism along with celebration.
Neil Paine is an analyst at Baseball-Reference.com, an online baseball encyclopedia of players, teams and box scores in the major and minor leagues.
A version of this article appears in print on Oct. 1, 2010, Section B, Page 12 of the New York edition with the headline: From Popgun Hitter to Powerhouse.
Filed under: Baseball, Classic Posts