Time to celebrate Bautista’s greatness
TORONTO On Sunday in Minnesota, Toronto Blue Jays manager John Gibbons gave Jose Bautista a day off from the field, inserting the veteran in the designated hitter slot of his lineup card.
With no game on Monday, there was further opportunity for Bautista to rest up for what could be an emotional week for a superstar who has been the face of the franchise for the better part of a decade.
The expectation is Jays fans will see plenty of one of the team’s alltime stars in the final homestand of this lost 2017 season. It will almost certainly be his last six Rogers Centre appearances in the uniform that helped define his career and put Toronto back on the Major League Baseball map.
Clearly, the season hasn’t gone the way Bautista figured it would. But a three-game home series against the Royals, which begins Tuesday, followed by three against the Yankees on the weekend, offers fans in southern Ontario the chance for a prolonged farewell to Joey Bats.
In the big picture, Bautista’s record and impact as a Jay has been significant, one of the most notable performers in franchise history. He was at the centre of the teams that went to back-to-back ALCS championships and a big reason for the rise in popularity from coast to coast.
Bautista’s personality and performance have helped owner Rogers Communications earn boatloads of cash and he has been the emotional and offensive leader of a team that has thrived.
Of late, it’s mostly been grim for the 36-year-old Dominican. A three-hit effort on Saturday in Minnesota ended a zero-for-17 skid at the plate and he’ll take a .207 batting average into his Rogers Centre farewell. In the fourgame series in Minnesota, Twins pitchers repeatedly walked Justin Smoak to get to Bautista’s bat.
But Bautista deserves to be remembered for more than a disappointing season. Since 2010, Bautista has hit 20 home runs or more in each season, topping 35 on four occasions. The 54 he belted in 2010 are seven more than any Toronto player has hit in a season.