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View Full Version : Thoughts on Bautista - 50hr...


jboosted92
09-24-2010, 12:36 PM
Im sure its crossed alot of peopls minds about PED's and Bautista...

I will say this, as im someone who goes to the gym alot, put on 30-35 pounds of muscle wtih fair mix of supplements (that you can buy at GNC/Vitamin Shoppe) and to me, he DOES NOT appear to be someone that "got big"...at all..i think he possibly has cut his swing a bit different and increased his bat speed

Just my 2 cents...

ElCabron
09-24-2010, 12:38 PM
All I know is he's helped me dominate my fantasy league, so whatever he's doing, I hope he keeps doing it.

-Ryan

Robextend
09-24-2010, 12:51 PM
Probably a combination of him getting a legit shot to start for a full season and changing his approach. I think he took the league by surprise, and pitchers didn't adjust to him being a dead pull hitter.

jb217676
09-24-2010, 01:15 PM
I was at Blue Jays spring training this year and he looks just like a normal guy, not ripped at all. From what I saw he drinks lots of coffee, maybe it's the caffeine that gave him his boost! Seriously though, he gave us fans in Toronto something to cheer about and he's under contract for a couple more years at a decent price. Fits in well with an up-and-coming Blue Jays squad!

Anthony S.
09-24-2010, 01:25 PM
Maybe he and Brady Anderson are pen pals. Or share a pharmacist.

FUBAR
09-24-2010, 01:27 PM
When they interviewed him early on in the season, he said he changed his position in the batters box and altered one small thing in his swing and it has paid off for him!

As a Jays fan, I'm glad he is on our side until the Yankees or Red Sox steal him away in a few years!

D. Bergin
09-24-2010, 02:17 PM
I think all this recent PED talk is extremely unfair to him.

He's had a great season, especially the 2nd half. I actually picked him up in my fantasy league off the waiver wire, about 3 months into the season. It's a small league and nobody trusted his power would hold up and weren't willing to pick up, what most thought was another Carlos Pena type.

He's a late bloomer. Baseball history is filled with them. It's also filled with guys who had everything go right for one year, and for one reason or another was never able to come close to repeating it again.

Roger Maris was a fairly late bloomer himself. He had two special years, one or two pretty good years, and not much else to speak of, if we're being perfectly honest.

A guy doesn't have to be a superstar from the moment he steps foot in the league, to the moment he leaves, in order to make a mark on the game.

If somebody digs up some other evidence other then, "he's having a really good year for a guy who hasn't had one before", I'll take a look at it and point my judgements if need be. Otherwise, I hate assumptions. People who make them always say "I told you so", when they are right.......but usually aren't quite as forthcoming when they are proven wrong.

I try to think the best of people, until I am actually proven otherwise.

Anthony S.
09-24-2010, 02:32 PM
Maris hit 28 homers at the age of 23. 39 homers at the age of 25. 61 homers at the age of 26. He wasn't a late bloomer.

nebboy
09-24-2010, 02:41 PM
One way that I start my my fantasy BB league is I look at guys that are in a contract year. They over produce and show signs of greatness, sign a big contract and then PHooooooooooooooooff, until there next big payday. Many, many examples for this.

I call it (bobby bonilla sen-drum)

peterose4hof
09-24-2010, 03:23 PM
A guy like Bautista coming out of nowhere is part of what makes baseball so much fun. Plus it's great to give a team with virtually no chance of making the playoffs something to cheer for. As a lifelong Reds fan, I have experienced many a season rooting for individual player achievements because the team is eliminated from playoff contention by early-summer.

cdn_collector
09-24-2010, 07:48 PM
Plus it's great to give a team with virtually no chance of making the playoffs something to cheer for.

That says it all right there. I didn't get to as many Jays games this year as I'd have liked, but I still watch at least some of just about every game on TV. I gave up on having to worry about fighting for play-off tickets months ago and resorted to cheering for Bautista to break George Bell's team record instead.

As for the PED question, which everyone has thought about at least once, I'm sure, I have to believe he's clean. Maybe I'm naive, but what's the incentive? He's not in a contract year and we're going nowhere near the playoffs. I'm hoping it's the change in his swing from last September. Obviously I don't know for sure [Roger Clemens and Jose Canseco have some history in Toronto right about the time Carlos Delgado hit 44], but I'm going to root for him and assume that at worst, this season is an aberration, but a clean one.


Regards,

Richard.

Robextend
09-24-2010, 08:28 PM
He hit 2 more tonight...52 and counting!

jb217676
09-24-2010, 09:58 PM
Bautista is killin' it lately! MVP...MVP...MVP...

ethicsprof
09-24-2010, 10:02 PM
phenomenal player.
helping me to forget about all the McGwire memorabilia i bought for my nephews a few years back.

best,
barry

jb217676
09-24-2010, 10:15 PM
I was watching the Boston-New York game tonight and one of the Red Sox TV commentators brought up Jose Bautista. He said when he first read his notes early last season on Bautista they mentioned he was a good platoon player and a decent bat to come off the bench. He's a little better than that now I would say. Maybe the Red Sox should have made a move on him?

ElCabron
09-24-2010, 10:56 PM
If you watch him bat you can see why he has so many homers. The guy does not get cheated on his swings. He takes massive hacks at the ball and when he connects, it travels far.

Bilko G
09-25-2010, 02:31 AM
I can guarantee you that Bautista has been tested more than once this year for PEDs. With the season he has been having, im sure he is being watched very closely. I dont think players can get away with it anymore because if they can then we are still in the Steroid era and everyone says the Steriod Era is over. I believe that he is clean.

Anthony S.
09-25-2010, 02:56 AM
Of course players can get away with it. Major leaguers aren't even tested for HGH.

Rich Klein
09-25-2010, 04:59 AM
we may never know

and sometimes players have "that" magical year.

Tito Francona, (Terry's dad) hit something like .363 in 1959 -- Tito was a good player -- but .363 was just off the charts

Davey Johnson gets traded to Atlanta in 1973 and goes from a previous high of 18 homers all the way to 43

Tony Gonzalez, a competant but not great major leaguer -- somehow hits .339 in 1967 during the age of the pitcher. In retrospect, who saw that coming

Felix Mantilla goes to Boston in 1964, becomes a regular and hits 30 homers that year. He had never really been close before

Cleon Jones was a good major league hitter, but in 1969 -- he hit .340 or so to help the Mets win the World Series.


(If my figures are wrong, I'm doing this from the top of my head and don't be afraid to post the real numbers and I'll edit them)

My point is, sometimes players have those magical years and sometimes everything just clicks for a year. A player might start strong, make a minor adjustment, and gains confidence. All of a sudden, they are in the "Sweet spot" and that sweet spot lasts a full season -- or in a tennis grand slam for the full 2 weeks. I always like to point out Andres Gomez the 1990 French Open tennis champion.

Andres was an honest professional, a better doubles player than singles player, but beat a young Andre Agassi to win that final. After that, he only played 2 more years and never got past the 2nd round of a major nor had he been that close before. But things broke right for "go-go" in those 2 weeks and he is a grand slam winner.

So, we'll never know with Bautista, but "fluky" things do happen

Rich

slidekellyslide
09-25-2010, 12:22 PM
Of course players can get away with it. Major leaguers aren't even tested for HGH.

There is no effective test for HGH. It would cost MLB too much money to test everyone and it probably would catch no one. I think they are randomly doing it in the minor leagues, but I haven't heard if anyone has tested positive or not.

hunterdutchess
09-25-2010, 12:44 PM
Man just 12 more homers and we would have a new single season home run champ : )

chaddurbin
09-25-2010, 12:51 PM
fluky high batting averages can be explained by luck when balls are in play. spike in hr total out of the blue would suggest modern chemistry.

alanu
09-25-2010, 01:21 PM
He reminds me of Ibanez, a really late bloomer. I don't think we'll ever know about the HGH, but all HR hitters will be questioned until they can properly test for it.

familytoad
09-25-2010, 02:29 PM
Here's another guy who went HR-happy at age 30 who weighed in about a buff 195 lbs (sure)...what were the pundits saying about Hack? He hit 23% of his career total in that one year. (For reference... Bautista is at 48% of his career total coming in 2010)

As mentioned before, sometimes it all just "clicks" for a season or two for these athletes. It's a shame that PEDs cloud these accomplishments.

Anyway, I thought it was time for a old baseball card scan :

packs
09-25-2010, 04:00 PM
I don't think he's juicing. It's purely a feeling though. His game has not changed dramatically enough for me to think he's juicing. While his home run output has clearly jumped, his batting average has not. If I remember correctly, the years where Sosa and McGwire were really juicing it their batting averages went sky high compared to their career average. Maybe that's luck, maybe that has nothing to do with the juice, but it certainly seems coincidental. Bautista is still hovering near his usual hitting ability but is just making better contact with the ball. Looks to be a Carlos Pena kind of player to me.

DixieBaseball
09-25-2010, 05:38 PM
Re : Bautista : Innocent until proven guilty.
(see George Foster's stats from 1977 in comparison to everyone elses. I like the new(old) Baseball. We are back to the 70's where if a player hits 30 dongs, it matters. 40 is really special, and 50 is reserved for one player.)

glynparson
09-26-2010, 05:57 PM
I believe he juices but I don't see it as the travesty to the game so many do. Cheating has been part of the game of baseball since the beginning of the sport. Many like to romanticize the old-timers and pretend they were much more saintly then they were. Heck I've seen guys on here admire the black sox or Hal chase, people that cheated to lose, and then turn around and vilify the juicers, whose increased production would be cheating to win. Makes no sense to me.

chaddurbin
09-26-2010, 08:17 PM
i don't have a problem with juicers or the steroid era, put the best guys of that era in the hall (bonds, clemens, manny, arod, pujols etc). the grand old game was never that clean to start out with.

Anthony S.
09-26-2010, 09:56 PM
Here's another guy who went HR-happy at age 30 who weighed in about a buff 195 lbs (sure)...what were the pundits saying about Hack? He hit 23% of his career total in that one year. (For reference... Bautista is at 48% of his career total coming in 2010)

As mentioned before, sometimes it all just "clicks" for a season or two for these athletes. It's a shame that PEDs cloud these accomplishments.

Anyway, I thought it was time for a old baseball card scan :

You mean 1930, the year that the National League as a whole hit .300?

2010 is the year of the pitcher, isn't it? 5 no-hitters.

familytoad
09-26-2010, 11:22 PM
I wouldn't call 2010 the year of the pitcher, although everything is relative in life I suppose.
In 1990 Cecil Fielder led MLB with 51 homers and an all-time modern record 9 no-hitters were thrown that year.
Clearly the modern day "year of the pitcher" is 1968 though.

Back to 1930, most of baseball hit near .300, but not everyone hit 50 HR's.
Individually, Hack Wilson set NL records for HR and RBI. Of all the established greats playing at that time, I'm guessing that few would have picked Wilson to be the league leader and record setter. I think that parallels with Bautista's season, a surprise HR leader, breaking out at age 30.

Besides...I don't have scans of Brady Anderson or Greg Vaughn cards to post:)

Anthony S.
09-26-2010, 11:34 PM
In 1930 NL teams hit 892 home runs.

In 1931 NL teams hit 493 home runs.

In 1930, 9 NL hitters had OPS's over 1.000. The 10th, Lindstrom, clocked in at .999.

In 1931, no NL hitters had an OPS over 1.000.

1930 was an outlier circus.

P.S. 1929 was kind of a circus, too.

howard38
09-27-2010, 03:35 AM
Wilson's 56 HRs in 1930 may have been a surprise but leading the league was not. He was the NL HR champ in three of the previous four years and was close in 1929.

Kehfee
09-27-2010, 10:39 PM
If he's using PEDs then he started using them last year as he started launching balls around Sept 1st of last season.

Also the guy is basically the same size as Hank Aaron. He weighs about 190 pounds. To put that into perspective. It's the equivalent weight of one of Mcgwire's arms or Barry Bond's head.

Wite3
09-28-2010, 07:53 AM
I am far less impressed with Bautista's HR total than Ichiro's breaking a 100 year old record and getting his 10th consecutive 200 hit season. Truly impressive hitter there.

D. Bergin
09-28-2010, 08:09 AM
Ichiro is a marvel. That's for sure.

JasonL
09-28-2010, 08:20 AM
for several of the PEDs currently in use.

Ta DA!!!!

Tabe
09-28-2010, 05:06 PM
Probably a combination of him getting a legit shot to start for a full season and changing his approach. I think he took the league by surprise, and pitchers didn't adjust to him being a dead pull hitter.
I don't understand this "shot to start" thing that I've heard mentioned. Bautista played in 117 games in 2006, 142 in 2007, 128 in 2008, and 113 in 2009. He WAS a starter. Fact is, he didn't put up numbers to justify playing 150+ games. A corner IF/OF who slugs .410 while hitting .240? He had his shots and didn't do anything with them.

It certainly is justified to wonder if he's on PEDs. He's never slugger over .420 before and now he's at .622? That's certainly suspicious...

In 1930, 9 NL hitters slugged over 1.000. The 10th, Lindstrom, slugged .999.
You mean OPS. Wilson led in slugging in 1930 with a .723.

Philadelphia hit .315 as a team, averaging 6.05 runs per game - and finished last. Giving up nearly 8 rights a game (7.69) will do that to you :)

What a crazy, crazy year.

Interesting that the HR record originally set in 1927 has been surpassed many times since then but no one has broken the top 10 in season RBI in 70 years (Manny Ramirez with 165 in 1999 being closest, at 13th all-time).

Tabe