Jose Bautista has hit three home runs in the past two days, and now has 11 on the season, tied for third in all of baseball. In a season filled with "who saw this coming?", well.... who saw this coming???!
Bautista has gained some attention over at Fangraphs recently; Dave Cameron wrote a snippet about Bautista in his weekly What We Learned column, and then seemed to decide that Jose was worth more than two paragraphs and expanded his post by comparing Bautista to Ben Zobrist.
As Cameron points out, Bautista is only making 2.4 million dollars this year, and is controllable through 2011. Also, while the sample size for Bautista's power surge is admittedly small, it hasn't been just this year; Bautista smacked ten homers last September, increasing our confidence in saying this isn't just a fluke. If he has really established a new performance level, he could be one of the more attractive chips on the trade market this summer.
What Cameron doesn't explore: what if the Jays decide to keep Bautista? I think we've all been pleasantly surprised by the play of Canada's team throughout this young season, and while 2012 is probably the more reasonable target date for contention, it's not out of the question that the collective growth of the young core and perhaps a dip into the free agent market could lead to a somewhat competitive team as early as next year. If Jose Bautista is truly having a break-out season, and the staff thinks he can stick at third base, an area of long-term weakness for the club, he could be a piece worth keeping around, not only for the 2011 season but because clubs often have an easier time extending their own players.
But this discussion contains a lot of assumptions. Well, not a lot, but a couple of big ones. One is that a 29-year-old can suddenly flip a switch and turn from a perpetual role player into a starter. It's happened before, but it isn't common. The other assumption is that Bautista can passably play a position where he's historically had poor (though improving) stats.
So what do you think? Is it possible Bautista has figured something out and truly become a good hitter? And what about his 3B defense? Even though he's been around for several years, he only has about two seasons worth of defensive data at the hot corner, and with all the time he's spent in the outfield, maybe he just never had a chance to really work on becoming an average (or above) defender at 3B. Could he still do that?
My take: it's too early to tell, but as we all know this is a re-building year whose purpose is to find out what the team's assets are. I think Bautista could be one of those assets, which is more than I'm willing to say about E-5, and I'd like to see the Jays give Bautista as much playing time at third as they can. Unfortunately, that may not happen with Encarnacion coming off the DL today. But this isn't about what will happen, it's about what would you do, which is why we're all here anyway!
https://www.battersbox.ca/article.php?story=2010051800380437