Thoughts on Bautista - 50hr...

[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.