Back from holiday and the thing everyone is talking about is a crappy, dashed out post by a reporter that figured by making up a controversy people would notice him.
Every body else has had a run at the idiot reporter that decided to tell us that the reason Jose Bautista is hitting so many home runs is because he is using PED. His evidence? Well, back in the mid-90's Roger Clemens is thought to have used in Toronto and that Greg Zahn was mentioned in the Mitchell Report.
The idea of just making something like that up out of thin air is, you know, the reason reporters give for not liking us bloggers.
The good part about it is it gives us a good chance to celebrate Jose's great year. Here is a guy that has never had more than 16 homers in a year and already he is up to 38 40 (I'll be changing it against after tonight). Who knows, he might make 50.
Bautista's problem in the past has been an inability to hit right handed pitching. Last year, for a good part of it, he didn't even try. He wouldn't even swing the bat against a righty, hoping to take a walk. His numbers vs. RHP last year: .202/.331/.333. This year he is hitting RHP (.266./375/.605), better than lefties (.210/.333/.506). Tthe difference between this year and the past is that he is hitting right handers the way he used to hit lefties.
What else is he doing different? He is walking at about the same rate: 13.9% of the time last year, 14.2% this year. You would expect, the way he is hitting, pitchers would be thinking of walking him more. He's hitting line drives at close to the same rate, 16.7% last year, 14.4% this year. The big difference is that he has turned ground balls from last year to fly balls this year. He was hitting ground balls 41.3% of the time last year, 32.0% this year. They have become fly balls, 42.1% last year, 53.6% this year. And, of course, more of those fly balls are leaving the park: 21.5% orf them this year compared to 12.3% last year. He's figured out how to get the ball in the air with some power behind it.
Anyway, my point was that Jose Bautista's season should be a reason to celebrate not something to cast suspicions on. He's having a great season. He has a good shot at setting a new Jays record for home runs in a season, 8 more will do it.
I said in the thread last night, and want to say again, that I'd rather people not suggest that he is using on here, unless you have some real evidence, that's he'd put on 40 pounds of muscle or that you have seen him wandering around with a bottle that said 'Illegal Steroids' on it or something else real. If you just want to say 'he's having a good year, he must be juicing', do it somewhere else.