Not long ago Toronto Blue Jays slugger Jose Bautista was shuttled around the majors like an unwanted pet, playing for a record five teams in one season.
However, with the major league trade deadline rapidly approaching and contending teams looking to add some power at the plate, the 29-year-old Bautista is suddenly one of baseball’s most popular players.
While fans have been focused on the stalled quest by New York Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez to launch home run number 600, Bautista has been blasting the ball out of the park.
He slammed his MLB-leading 29th and 30th of the season on Tuesday as the Blue Jays thrashed the Baltimore Orioles 8-2.
“You can definitely feel it when you are in that zone,” Bautista said in the Jays’ clubhouse. “It’s is kind of like you can see it before it happens.
“You’re ready to hit it, it happens to come where you are looking and you swing and you hit it good,” he said. “It’s almost like you feel it before it happens and you just try to let it develop instead of forcing it.”
In 2004 Bautista led the major leagues in a far less flattering category — most teams played for in a single season.
Bautista began the year with Baltimore and was claimed off waivers by Tampa Bay, who later sold him to Kansas City.
Kansas City then traded the articulate Dominican to the New York Mets who shipped him to Pittsburgh, bringing Bautista’s career full circle by returning him to the the team that had originally drafted him in 2000.
Bautista spent three full seasons in Pittsburgh, but it was not until he was traded to Toronto in 2008 that he finally found a home and the groove that all major league hitters search for.
The seven-year big-league veteran is the biggest weapon on an explosive Toronto batting order that leads the major leagues with 154 home runs.
“Getting in a groove, it’s sort of like a slump,” said Bautista, who had never hit more than 16 home runs in a season before this year. “It’s something you’re not looking for, but something that just sort of arrives.
“Doing the things you need to do to be in position to hit the ball hard is the only thing you can control. After that it is just getting the pitches to hit,” he said. “If you do it over-and-over again and you are consistently ready, once you get those pitches you are more apt to hit them than miss them.
“For me that’s what has been working. I’ve been able to get to that point where I’m ready to hit the ball,” Bautista added.
Despite his power at the plate, it is Bautista’s cannon arm — not his booming bat — that has impressed Blue Jays manager Cito Gaston.
Gaston said Bautista’s play in the field makes it difficult to give him a night off.
“His arm makes it real tough,” Gaston said. “You hope that if there is going to be a base hit that it is hit to him.”
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