Carson on MLB: No doubting Bautista now

I’m sure there was a large segment of baseball’s fandom that thought, for whatever reason, that Jose Bautista would not even come close to replicating his monster, 54-home run season of a year ago.

I realize that 22 games does not a season make, but it sure looks like the Blue Jays’ slugger is on his way to another 50+ homer season.

What is most impressive is that he has hit eight home runs to date with little or no protection around him in the Jays’ underachieving lineup. Injuries to Rajai Davis and Aaron Hill have led to part-time players such as Corey Patterson, John McDonald, Jayson Nix and Mike McCoy receiving far too much playing time for the offence not to suffer. The Jays have largely been without the roster that they picked coming out of the spring, leading to a whopping 27 player transactions so far this month.

But there’s Bautista doing what he does best…going deep at a pace far ahead of last year’s. Last season, Jose did not hit his eighth home run until May 15th. As of Friday, he’s on pace to hit 59 home runs this season.

Is that feasible? Probably not, but there is also no reason to think that he can’t continue on that pace. After all, everyone thought it wasn’t possible last season.

Let’s not forget though that this prodigious power display began during the final month of the 2009 season after Cito Gaston, the first manager to finally believe in Bautista, started playing him on everyday basis.

The result? A major league-leading 10 home runs (tied with Minnesota’s Michael Cuddyer and Milwaukee’s Prince Fielder) to close out the schedule, followed by his well-documented 2010 season in which his team hit the third most home runs in a season in the history of the game. And keep this number in your minds if you still believe Bautista is just a one-year wonder: Since September 7, 2009, Jose has hit a grand total of 72 home runs, a full 20 more than second-place Albert Pujols.

Wow!

I have found it interesting that every city we visit this season, or when a team comes to Toronto, one of the commentators, whether TV or radio, stop by the booth and chat with Buck and Pat to get the latest on the Blue Jays. They have questions about Kyle Drabek or Travis Snider or Brett Cecil.

But, ultimately, more often than not, the same question is raised: Is Jose Bautista for real?

The standard answer is “yes.”

It’s getting to the point that I’m starting to wonder why opposition pitchers don’t start giving Bautista the Barry Bonds treatment and just start walking him on a regular basis, forcing others in the Blue Jays’ lineup to beat them. Instead, they continue to try and sneak fastballs by him and he takes them yard.

I guess they’ll just never learn.

RANDOM THOUGHTS

I’ve always looked at a couple of stats when trying to determine whether a young pitcher is on his way to stardom.

One is BABIP (batting average on balls in play), one of the new-age stats to show their effectiveness. The other is the old-school, tried and true team wins and losses in a game started by said pitcher.

For the Blue Jays Kyle Drabek, who picked up his second career win in the series opener Monday night in Arlington, that number is 5-0 in his 2011 starts.

The Blue Jays patience with Brett Lawrie is the right call. We all know that Lawrie is hitting a whopping .421 18 games into his first AAA season. But he also has made six errors on the rough and rocky fields of the Pacific Coast League. Sure, the Jays could use his offence, but I’m thinking that another three weeks at the highest level of the minors will not be a bad thing in the big picture.

Speaking of the minors, as a result of poor drafting during the pre-Anthopoulos era, the Blue Jays bench is looking very thin with the injuries they’ve endured this season.

The fact that they’ve been forced to bring back Chris Woodward who was, for all intents and purposes, retired as spring training was winding down, is proof that there’s a chasm between the big club and the plethora of prospects heading towards Toronto.

A couple of interesting numbers from this first month of the season: The Jays are 7-1 in the opening game of a series, 3-11 in the rest. Not sure what it means, but it still is worth noting.

They say that hindsight is 20/20, but every time that the Jays hook up with the Rangers, I always think about the one that got away – Michael Young. For the uninformed, Young was a rising prospect in the Jays’ system and a teammate of Vernon Wells on a couple of levels when then general manager Gord Ash, searching for starting pitching, was forced to part with Young in order to get right-hander Esteban Loaiza.

Young currently sits second in the A.L. batting race behind Jose Bautista, and since 2002, his 1,785 hits are second only to Ichiro (2,032). Young sure would have looked good in Jays’ uniform over the last decade, don’t ya think?