Bats will be back for June swoon
Bautista should be playing in majors long before Atlanta’s two-game visit to Toronto
If you happen to be wandering around the Yorkville area on June 18 and see a guy that looks like Jose Bautista, it likely will be Jose Bautista. The Atlanta Braves have a scheduled twogame interleague series set for June 19-20 at the Rogers Centre, with an off-day preceding it, and the odds are that Bautista, currently playing himself into game shape in the minors, will be with the major-league club well before that.
The former Jays all-star signed with the Braves and his former Blue Jays boss, GM Alex Anthopoulos, last Tuesday for a contract that would pay him $1 million (pro-rated) if he is in the majors. He is expected to platoon at third base when he inevitably joins the Braves sometime on the upcoming road trip. Anthopoulos insists manager Brian Snitker can use Bautista however he wants, either at third base, first base (where Freddie Freeman is currently on the DL) or in the outfield, where he played primarily with the Jays.
Bautista is on a fast track. He worked out at Braves camp in Orlando on Thursday, then played an extended spring training game, coincidentally at the Mattick Training Centre in Dunedin against the Jays, on Friday. He was at third base for two games for the Braves’ Class-A affiliate in the Florida State League on the weekend and reported to Triple-A Gwinnett for a doubleheader in Rochester Monday.
The 37-year-old Bautista went 2-for-7 for in Class-A over the weekend, with two walks and a double and was set to play third and DH in the International League twinbill on Monday. It was reported by SB Nation’s Chris Cotillo that Joey Bats had turned down an offer from the Indians that would have paid him more, but his relationship with Anthopoulos, plus a chance for a more significant big-league role with the young Braves made up his mind. It’s not about the money.
Whenever it is that Bautista steps to the plate in a Braves uniform at Rogers Centre, Jays fans should make sure to give him a standing ovation far greater than the inexplicable one accorded Ryan Goins with the Royals last week. Bautista is the most important Blue Jays player since Carlos Delgado. Why? After hammering 54 and 43 homers in 2010 and 2011 and emerging as a perennial MVP candidate, Bautista signed a long-term deal that was a gamble for both the player and the club, given his age and sudden emergence as a star. Over a half dozen years, he served as the conscience of Anthopoulos when it came to the commitment to put a winning team on the field while they were both in their prime in Toronto. When the GM, at the insistence of ownership, did nothing to help the team at the 2014 trade deadline, Bautista led the player protest against his inaction.
The next year, Anthopoulos rolled the dice at the deadline, acquiring the needed ingredients to win the AL East and advance to the ALCS, where they lost to the eventual champion Royals. It was those bold moves and that relationship between the GM and his star player that created this new generation of Jays fans that have been packing the Rogers Centre for the last three summers. Praise the Lourdes: When rookie Lourdes Gurriel Jr. started Sunday’s game at shortstop for Toronto, he became just the 16th shortstop in 42 years signed and developed by the Blue Jays to play at least one game at that position in his first MLB season.
The first homegrown shortstop in franchise history was Fred Manrique in 1981. Subjectively, the five most successful shortstops produced by the organization in their debut seasons have been Tony Fernandez (1983); Alex Gonzalez (’94); Russ Adams (’04); Chris Woodward (’99) and Felipe Lopez (’01). Not deep.
It seems the past 13 seasons have seen especially difficult for homegrown shortstops emerging from the Jays’ system. Since the start of 2006, there have been just four Blue Jays homegrowns, including the latest, Gurriel.
The other three shortstops signed and developed from within the system have been Adeiny Hechavarria (’12); Ryan Goins (’13) and Richard Urena (’17). The longest at-bat: On Sunday afternoon in Anaheim, hard by the gates of that fantasy world known as Disneyland, Giants first baseman Brandon Belt took Angels pitcher Jaime Barria on the wildest ride of his life, forcing the rookie to throw 21 pitches in recording the second out of the first inning.
Belt, after battling for 13 min- utes and 16 foul balls, finally lined to the right fielder for the second out of the game. The 21 pitches are the highest ever recorded since 1988, when MLB first started keeping a tally.
Barria was making just his second major-league start. He left the bases loaded with Giants in the first, requiring 49 pitches for one shutout inning. In the top of the third, Barria faced Belt again with a runner on first base and nobody out. This time, Belt fouled off another four pitches and then singled on a 1-2 count. One more hitter and Barria was gone: A total of 77 pitches in two-plus innings.
The previous record of 20 pitches for one plate appearance came in a June 26, 1998 battle between Indians righthander Bartolo Colon and Astros shortstop Ricky Gutierrez that resulted in a swinging strikeout.
What’s truly amazing about the Big Sexy’s 1998 battle is, first, that Colon is still pitching in the majors and, second, that day he lasted eight full innings on 112 pitches, including the 20-pitch battle versus the Astros’ light-hitting shortstop.
In that game, Gutierrez worked Colon for 30 total pitches in his three at-bats. Pitching to the other 25 Astros batters, Colon required just 72 pitches, throwing an efficient 23 balls, averaging less than one non-strike per batter.
Finally, Sunday’s 4-2 victory for Belt’s Giants over the Angels took four hours and seven minutes to play nine innings, wreaking havoc on the commissioner’s pace-of-play initiatives.
But, hey, that’s baseball and that’s why we love it.