Thoughts on Bautista - 50hr...

[familytoad]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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.]

Originally Posted by familytoad

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]

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.]

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]

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]

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]

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]

Ichiro is a marvel. That's for sure.