Many factors play into Bautista's emergence as a beast.
1)he clearly wasn't ready to be in the big's, yet he got to be during all those years in Pittsburgh. There are many great late bloomers that languish in the minors until 28 or 29 only to have some monstrous years at the big league level.
2)Confidence is everything. Many players that are brought up too soon get discouraged to the point where they don't see reality, and the mentality of thinking they suck, becomes a trend. While many times, a change of team or simple encouragement from someone such as a new manager or hitting coach can give them a new confidence.
3)That same change in hitting coach will often lead to a change in a player's swing. Which is clearly working for Bautista in this case.
4)Sometimes simple placement in the batting order will lead to seeing better pitches. Which, duh! Lead to more home runs.
5)Sometimes a player just gets the lucky with what pitches he's getting. I'll use Brady Anderson as an example here, yes, I know he juiced, But you don't go from 16-50 on steroids alone. Luck plays a huge part in it..
6)as someone stated earlier, Bautista is an all or nothing type hitter. Once all the other factors play in, if a player starts connecting, pitchers will start walking him or pitching around him. Which will often lead to the only hittable pitches he sees being mistakes. And he's been seeing alot of mistakes lately. That's the main difference between a guy like Bautista or Dave Kingman(dude was a beast, especially in '79) and guys like Richie Sexson and Russel Branyan.
Aside from not having almost no luck earlier in his career, Bautista would be the modern equivalent of Dave Kingman. Kingman peaked at around 30, partially due to a change in coaching that more suited him, plus some luck.. A difference in pitching and managerial approaches in this era are the reason a player of this type CAN bat .350+ rather than, if lucky, .288 in the older eras, as in Kingman's best season. Back in those day, the pitching approach was more, challenge him, if he hit's one then, oh well. And that was pretty much the same approach most pitchers took to Sexson as well. This "throw crap pitches and hope not to f*** up" approach is somewhat of a newer thing...
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