.
Bat571 sez,
If you want to edit these comments into a main article, feel free.
.
As y'know, we live to serve...
... ourselves, that is. Who is Dr. D to pass up a driveby post like this. mwahaha Console yerselves in the Editor's Choice benefit crumbs that we pacify the masses with. ... No, seriously, when a comments section is as provocative as this one was, it becomes an interesting sub-topic.
Eliminating the easy variables first:
.
I like the immigration paperwork on E. Encarnacion far better than Joey Bats. - Billy Zoom
IFF you're going out to get one more big bat, I'd rather they trade for Braun. - Bat571
.
Sure, and sure. The question of Joey Bautista --- > (1) concerns the possibility of a cheap* scrape-the-mayo-jar addition to a team that is done rostering its bats, and (2) exists only in Dr. D's addled mind anyhow. If they are REALLY going to try to reproduce the 1975 Reds Beatlemania then you'd go get somebody who is not 36 and coming off a down year. No doubt.
.
Mo' Dawg sez,
A weird animal. Bautista's BABIP over the last 5 seasons has been .215-.259-.287-.237-.255. Vs LHP it has been totally weird: .179-.213-.345-.235-.214.
He's feast (over the fence) or famine when he hits the ball.
.
And now we get to the real reason for the conversation stub, in case you could help Dr. D with a little SABR riddle. Why is Bautista's BABIP so low? Points of order:
(1) Bautista is freakishly good when the hits are NOT falling in. When his BABIP is .0xx or .1xx he is usually still an above-average hitter! Amazing.
.
.
(2) Yes, Bautista is a flyball hitter. Sabermetrically this leads to more "cans of corn" and more outs, than would a bunch of balls on the ground. But Bautista is not an extreme flyball hitter. He's got a career ratio of 45:39 fly ball to ground ball.
(3) Bautista DOES hit a lot of skyballs on the infield. But Jays fans wrongly (?) assume this to be the reason for the low BABIP's, year after year. For example, after 2013 (!) they wrote:
.
Bautista hit .053 on flyballs last season in play. Yes, .053! This was the second worst rate in the entire MLB.
Now the league average of .143 isn’t anything to write home about. But .053 is a grand total of 7 hits in 128 AB. This was mostly due to giving away 28 outs to infield flyballs (IFFB).
.
Whoa, whoa, whoa. After you edit out the 28 popups, you're still batting .070 on fly balls that are into the outfield. Say whaaaa?
(4) Without looking it up, we can assure you that Jose Bautista's exit velocities are perfectly fine, think yew very much. Yet his [fly balls that are not HR] are not producing - mostly at Toronto. I don't get this.
(5) Jays fans give us this exec sum: when Bautista is in 1-800-YANKITT mode, he gets home runs, strike outs, dribblers to SS, and fly balls into his power alley. Leaving us with the riddle in (4).
(6) As we all know, Bautista pulls the ball like a crazy man ... wasn't it him who hit 53 of 54 homers to the left of second base one year? But the shift affects ground balls, not fly balls.
So, Jose Bautista's results after he makes contact ... "WEIRD" is indeed the way to describe it. If somebody could capture Bautista's profile in 10 words or less, Dr. D would be grateful. Even 11 words.
.
ASK BILL, Dept.
Most Denizens probably realize that Bautista was a late, VERY late bloomer. Recently James had this interesting little observation:
.
How long does a late bloomer like Justin Turner usually bloom?
Asked by: bobfiore
Answered: 12/12/2016
Well, not sure we can generalize based on when he bloomed. Turner has had three straight good seasons now, OPS in the .800s all three years, so I think we can regard that as a real level of ability, as opposed to a fluke.
Sometimes. . .well, many times a player who is late getting a chance will last longer than a player who gets a chance earlier, I believe because it takes longer for his hunger to go away. Raul Ibanez was an example of that, Lou Piniella, Hank Sauer.
That player who is turned back and turned back and turned back, when his turn finally comes, he doesn't want to go gracefully into the night. Lou Piniella I think reached Triple A in '63, '64, touched the majors in '64, but then didn't really get a job until 1969--then he lasted until he was 40. A player like that doesn't normally last until he is 40, but he always felt that he had something to prove. David Ortiz was a little bit like that; he was late getting a job, but once he had a job he stayed hungry.
.
So you may feel that Jose Bautista will come back in 2017 raging, raging against the dying of the light. Or not.
Enjoy,
Jeff
