The Odd Timing of Jose Bautista’s Breakout
The comparisons to Brady Anderson and Davey Johnson grew old before the 2010 season ended. Any time a player hits far more home runs than we expect, he’ll draw those comparisons. It’s not without merit, since both of those players did have one season that stood out among the rest in terms of power. But those were different times. The 2010 season was unlike the previous few seasons for one notable reason: the lack of home runs. Yet Jose Bautista managed to completely reverse that league-wide trend.
Since a peak in 2000, home runs have dipped a bit. In 2010 we saw the most dramatic slide yet.
| Year | HR |
|---|---|
| 2000 | 5693 |
| 2001 | 5458 |
| 2002 | 5059 |
| 2003 | 5207 |
| 2004 | 5451 |
| 2005 | 5017 |
| 2006 | 5386 |
| 2007 | 4957 |
| 2008 | 4878 |
| 2009 | 5042 |
| 2010 | 4613 |
Even in 1996, when Anderson hit his 50, the league hit 300 more home runs than in 2010. In fact, 2010′s total is the lowest the league has experienced during a full season since 1993. That Bautista’s home-run total rose drastically while the rest of the league’s dropped off seems like a significant detail when evaluating his performance and his fresh five-year, $65 million contract.
In the wake of the signing, both David Gershman and Bill Petti of Beyond the Boxscore compared Bautista’s season to Rich Aurilia‘s 2001. The comparison makes sense on a number of levels, since Aurilia had a similar track record before his breakout. Both of their breakouts came at the same age. The caution is that Aurila crash-landed after that season and was never again worth more than 2.9 WAR. Yet I can’t put too much weight into that comparison, because of the information above. Aurilia’s breakout came at a time when major leaguers were slugging homers at record paces. Bautista’s breakout came when homers were at a 15-(full)year low.
This isn’t to say that Bautista will hit 50 home runs again. Chances are, he will not, but that’s not necessarily a reflection of him as a player. Since 1901 there have only been 42 instances of a player hitting 50 or more home runs in a season, and only 10 players have done it more than once. But the list contains few flukes. Even among the one-timers, there are more sustained successes than flukish seasons. If we’re pointing to Brady Anderson and Rich Aurilia as examples of why Bautista won’t continue to succeed, we also need to look at others who have done what he did and have produced fine numbers afterward.
There are certainly some curiosities to Bautista’s 2010 season. That’s going to happen any time a player goes from hitting around 15 home runs per season to hitting 54. But there is also evidence, starting with Bautista’s 10-homer September 2009, that suggests he might have finally found his swing at age 29. Given the context of the league-wide drop in homers, I think that Bautista’s 2010 might be more real that we might give him credit for.
45
Strikes me as not adding very much to the “will Bautista regress” debate.
…because it’s not supposed to. Read the last line of the piece.
My take on Jose is that Cito was great at stealing signs from the opposing catcher. During the 2 world series years, the Jays hitters all seems to know exactly what kind of pitch is coming in a certain at bat because Cito was a master in stealing signs.
I would rule out steroid until he is proven otherwise. Jose will regress this year; we are just not sure how much that regression will be. In 2010, Jose at least had Wells hit 30 bombs behind him in the lineup, serving as a bit of protection. In 2011, the 4th hitter most likely become Lind who is still trying to re-establish himself
Without Cito and Wells, I think Jose could regress to under 30 bombs. Because if Lind continues to stink, there is no way I am pitching to Jose if I were the opposing pitcher.
One thing is a certainty in 2011, we will see the real Bautista; a Bautista who has close to no protection in the lineup, and no amazing sign stealing relayed back from the dugout.
I don’t get why September stats should or would have a greater predictive value than the stats over the rest of the season. If anything, shouldn’t we take a more cynical view of Sept stats given the dilution of major league talent as a result of call-ups?
Sure enough, if you look at who those HRs came against–frankly, a bunch of players i’ve never heard of–J Manship, M Dunn, I Snell, H Jones, well, ok, i’ve heard of Ian Snell…I mean, hitting home runs off of double-A talent is evidence that he found his stroke??
No, but sometimes, when a player goes on a hot streak after working with coaches, and both coaches and the player agree than things have changed, it’s an actual improvement. There’s no way to spot this, I don’t think, in advance though – in retrospect, Bautista has not just 1 year of performance at the 2010 level, but another consecutive month as well. It’s not much more information, but it is more information none the less.
I think Bautista 2010 is most like Zobrist 2009, who also made much heralded mechanical improvements in 2008/2009, and had a sudden surge of power. This comparison doesn’t point to good things for the future though, since 2010 Zobrist returned to a low power guy who got most of his value from defense/position (something Bautista doesn’t have going for him). I didn’t follow Tampa that closely, was Zobrist injured, or did his magical new mechanics just stop working?
I thought the whole reason Fangraphs doesn’t show 1st Half/2nd Half splits is because people misuse them to make claims about a player improving or declining? If those sample sizes are too small, then surely one month is even worse. Yet every author here keeps saying “No, there’s nothing fishy about Bautista’s season because he had a great 30 days once.”
In this case, the September 2009 stats could be an indication that 2010 is actually sustainable. That is, the new found power not only lasted an entire season, it lasted over an entire off-season as well.
…and the rest were hit off Scott Baker, Chad Gaudin, Clay Buchholtz, Hideki Okajima, Chris Ray and Jeremy Guthrie. That year, Snell had an ERA+ of 103, so he was an average pitcher. So three of the HRs were against September call-ups. That’s why HRs are up about 20% every September.
Check hittrackeronline: Every one of Bautista’s HRs in Sept/Oct was classified as either “plenty” or “No doubt”.
Thanks for the heads up as to the site. I have been contending for some time that Bautista is for real, due primarily watching the bombs he hit. 54 is most likely difficult to repeat but 40 is very realistic. This guy has the size and bat speed to repeat his 2010 performance. It should be emphasized that only once before did he receive 500 AB.
i’m completely open to the idea that through a different approach/coaching/whatever something has changed for bautista.
i’m just saying when you use september stats–and, yes, it’s a neat coincidence that he retained that month’s HR rate the following year–to say that a player is getting stronger/better, there should be a 1. a reminder that pitching is generally less good that time of year and 2. that it leaves you open to criticism that you’re overvaluing a small set of data, esp when later events seem to confirm that earlier data.
And 40 is one helluva year.
In this case, it matters because Bautista figure something out–aided by then-Toronto hitting coach Gene Tenace. Before this, Bautista wasn’t timing his foot-landing with his hip trigger. Tenace put the two together, and voila! as we say in Canada.
Anyone who watched him hit last summer understood that this was no fluke. He was always a decent hitter: he just put the last piece of the puzzle into place.
I don’t think he’ll hit 54 again. But he’s a 35-40 homer guy, and with very little luck involved. There was simply no way to pitch to this guy last summer.
I’ve never heard Tenace mentioned as the architect of his swing/stance change. Bautista himself credited Cito Gaston and Dwayne Murphy.
7 of his his Sept. 2009 HR’s also came against playoff teams – Yanks (2), BoSox(3), Twins(2)
He didn’t receive regular playing time before the end of 2009, I think that had a lot to do with his breakout as well.
Carlos pena is a good Comp. He hit 46 in 06 or 07 whenever it was. He followed it up with a really mediocre season the next year but then rebounded the year after.
It was ’07 that he hit 46. He followed that up with 31 HRs in 2008 and was good for 4 WAR. I wouldn’t call that a really mediocre season.
“I think that Bautista’s 2010 might be more real that we might give him credit for.”
People who how “real” Bautista’s 2010 might be do so not so much because they question whether he can/will repeat it but because they question whether it was aided by some kind of banned substance.
That was one tortured sentence.
And the idea that steroids could give Bautista a 39-home run jump is laughable.
Quite frankly, speculating on any one thing that would lead to a 39 home run jump for an established player is laughable.
Barry Bonds’ 2001 and Sammy Sosa’s 1998 say hi.
Did someone call my name?
If Jose is taking something illegal and gained 39 home runs solely from it, wait until some real bombers get hold of his juice. We’ll see someone hit 120 homers.
/sarcasm
Maybe we are overthinking this and the production boost is a clever usage of “Cork”:)
We should be careful not to reduce his 2010 to a surge in home runs. His BB/K ratio was also much improved, and I feel like improvement in that stat has got to be a whole lot less fluky than home runs.
And starting with mid-August 2009 was the first time since 2007 (his age 26 year) that he got starter playing time.
BTW, his 162-game projection based on his Sept/Oct stats, was: 54 HRs!
Oh My God
Seeing how everybody on the Bluejays were sending balls out of the park with reckless abandon in 2010, I’d attribute it to something the hitting instructor was doing. It can’t be a coincidence that numerous players other than Bautista on the same team, enjoyed above-average power compared to their 2010 peers at their respective positions. Compared to his teammates, the main difference with Bautista, aside from the astronomical HR output, was that he was walking more. The rest of his squad were classic Bluejay low-onbase% guys. My guess is the hitting instructor drilled into these guys to swing for the fences on every pitch, and Bautista was either more selective with his approach than other Jays, or had higher quality PEDs.
As a Bluejays fan, I hate to admit it, but a power spike of this magnitude in this era, and one that resulted in a big contract, may have been the result of undetectable PEDs. I’ve looked at this from every angle for months, and as much as I’d like to believe that Jose Bautista did this cleanly, it is hard to fathom how the average distance of the balls he was hitting was suddenly much greater than it ever was before.
I watched him play from the 2nd half of 2009 to parts of 2010. Those Sept. 2009 homers, I know, were an indication that he had turned the corner as a former failed power prospect. However, even to my untrained eye, there is a noticeable improvement in his bat speed from 2010 to 2009. Is it the improved stance? Maybe. I really don’t know. It would be naive to completely rule out the possibility of PED use, not just with Bautista, but with other Bluejays as well.
It’s what those canadians call viral home-run-itis
Jays fan here too. The interesting thing is there’s not much difference in his Average True Distance, Avg Speed Off Bat, and Average Standard Distance from 2006 through 2010 (as per HitTracker).
Highest to Lowest Average True Distance seasons: 2007, 2006, 2010, 2008, 2009. Only in 2009 was he below 400 feet (it was 394.4 ft: still a fair poke), which means his average HR have always been bombs.
Highest to Lowest Average Speed Off Bat seasons: 2007, 2010, 2006, 2008, 2009. There’s a small range here from 103.3 MPH in 2009 to 107.3 MPH in 2007.
Highest to Lowest Average Standard Distance seasons: 2010, 2007, 2006, 2009, 2008. “Only” the first 2 seasons in that list had him averaging at least 400 ft. The lowest is still 394.9 ft, which would go out of most parts of most parks.
The main difference I think is that his new open stance has him facing the pitcher with both eyes straight on, which seems to make it easier for him to identify pitch types and locations quicker and he’s getting his foot down quicker which keeps his head still during his swing. This is reflected in the huge increase in his BB% between 2008 and 2009-2010.
Who knows though? I guess we’ll just have to find out when the season starts. Hurry up April 1st. ;)
Jerry Hairston on MLB has a video showing the difference between his old stance and swing (which often caused him to be late when trying to pull the ball) and new one. He’s also raised his bat and adopted a leg kick similar to Harold Baines
We can’t rule out caffeinated alcohol beverages.
Must be brain and nerve tonic rich in proteins and electromagnetic juices
He’s certainly not going to hit 50 HR again or sniff .300, but his on-base skills are for real, and it’s hard to imagine him hitting fewer than 30 bombs in a full season.
Take a look at the year of Aurilia’s peak and the team he played for. 2001 was the year of 73! As in Bond’s 73!
IMHO hitting in front of (or behind for that matter) the single season hr record holder would likely mean you see more fastballs over the plate as pitchers want to avoid putting runners on base ahead of the other worldly Bonds. Aurilla probably never saw so many hittable pitches as he did that year. I wonder how many other Giants had above average or career years in 2001 due in no small part to bonds record breaking season.
Combine that with the fact that Aurilia spent considerable time on the disabled list the following year (groin and right elbow) and the massive plummet in WAR over the 2 seasons becomes more understandable.
Like the effort to compare Bautista to Davey Johsons’ outlier season by others (DJs season can be better attributed to leaving the AL and moving to NL where pitchers were unfamiliar with him, had no historical reason to respect his power and the hitter friendly ballpark in Atlanta) the Aurilia comparison simply doesn’t apply. Bautista’s success has not come under the protection of a superior hitting line up with a single player having a season for the ages nor due to a new league, hitter friendly park or delayed adjustment by pitchers. Bautista was that player having a season for the ages and barring injury, I believe his subsequent seasons will be more comparable to Bonds after 2001 than Aurilia or Johnson. (Please note: hyperbole intended)
PEDS
One main gist of the article is that Bautista bucked the trend in 2010 while other instances fo huge spikes in players’ power occurred along with the trend in all baseball. One thing this addresses is PEDS. All the classic roiders experienced their spikes in power along with a spike in power for the whole league. Essentially, if Bautista was juicing, why wasn’t everyone else?
Also, if you want to use those classic roiders as a comp for Bautista the you have to be of the opinion that his power surge will continue, as did theirs.
If he’s juicing (and I don’t think he is, see paragraph 1) the why wouldn’t you expect another 50+ homers next year?
I’m not saying Bautista won’t regress next year, but I have yet to see anything solid to indicate why that is probable, except his hr/fb ratio whihc if you took down to hislast few years still puts him around 40+.
why wouldn’t you expect him to hit 50+ homers next year?
Because 5 players in history have done it. Ruth, Griffey, McGwire, Sosa, and ARod.
actually, no player in history has hit 50 homers next year
Fredsbank:
Base Ruth (twice): 1920/21, 1927/28
Ken Griffey Jr.: 1997/98
Mark McGwire (4 years in a row): 1996-99
Sammy Sosa: (4 years in a row): 1998-2001
ARod: 2001-2
It should be noted that another indicator which pointed to Jose Bautista’s 2010 season not being a fluke (aside from a fantastic 10 Homer September 2009 to finish off the prior season…but he also destroyed the majors in Spring training 2010, leading the Grapefruit league in Batting average and Home runs as well. Regardless if Spring Training numbers are typically taken witha grain of salt, it goes without saying that those statistics were extremely impressive of a follow up to Sept 2009 nonetheless
Alex Gonzalez had 17 HR at the ASB, more HR than he ever had at the ASB in his career at age 33. He hit 6 HR the rest of the way with the Braves (about his normal rate).
Makes you wonder if something was up last year. Maybe they were picking up signs or something, or all drinking the same coolaid .
i can hardly wait for the season to start so we can just find out.
attn griffey: Foxx, Kiner, Bonds, Mantle, Mays.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Bautista didn’t hit 52 more homeruns…over the remainder of his career.