Bautista, Blue Jays nearing five-year deal

[Palodios]

This. Nothing is 'fairly obvious'. There is absolutely zero legitimate evidence to suggest he is cheating in any way' date=' so why in the world should we basically assume that he is?[/quote']

 

Go into the baseball history books. Find a guy who went from hitting 10 HRs every year during his career, and at age 30 started hitting 50 bombs. His minor league numbers don't exactly show it either. Is Pittsburgh's system so bad it went a decade without finding a small hole in his batting stance? A full decade?

[ORS]

Go into the baseball history books. Find a guy who went from hitting 10 HRs every year during his career' date=' and at age 30 started hitting 50 bombs. His minor league numbers don't exactly show it either. Is Pittsburgh's system so bad it went a decade without finding a small hole in his batting stance? A full decade?[/quote']

Yeah, this is about where I am too. We aren't talking about a guy who had something click and went from a 20's to 40's HR per year. Overnight, he went from having mid-teens HR power to 50+. In the age of pervaisive PED use in the sport and a soft testing program (no test for HGH, testing program behind development of PED), all skepticism is completely warranted.

 

I'll admit, it's certainly possible that he's legit, that he figured something out and has become a much better player. The likelihood that the improvement we've seen is due to that and that alone, given the current state of the game, is very small, though.

[yankees228]

All of that is well and good, but it doesn't trump the fact that there isn't an ounce of legitimate evidence to suggest that Bautista is cheating in any way. Maybe part of my stance comes from the fact that I just don't care at all about PEDs, but I just see no reason to make assumptions without any tangible support for those assumptions.

[Emmz]

Does anyone know anything about scouting reports saying he was expected to hit around 35 homers last season? I remember having a discussion about whether or not he was juicing, and I guess he was expected to have a massive power surge just because he corrected his swing. I've never seen anything about this scouting report, I don't know if it's just something that some Jays fans came up with to stop steroid talk or what, but I've heard of it a few times since then.

[yankees228]

Does anyone know anything about scouting reports saying he was expected to hit around 35 homers last season? I remember having a discussion about whether or not he was juicing' date=' and I guess he was expected to have a massive power surge just because he corrected his swing. I've never seen anything about this scouting report, I don't know if it's just something that some Jays fans came up with to stop steroid talk or what, but I've heard of it a few times since then.[/quote']

 

There was a lot of talk that in September of 2009, with the help of his hitting coach, Bautista revamped his entire approach and focused almost exclusively on opening up his front side early and pulling the ball. What's often overlooked is that Bautista's breakout didn't come in 2010, but rather during the previous September, correlating perfectly with when he made this adjustment. Skeptics will claim that this is just an excuse or a cover story. But with no legitimate evidence (can't stress that enough) linking him to PEDs, I find his story to be much more likely.