Bautista carved out his own path
When I covered the Blue Jays full-time I used to call José Bautista “220,” because with a couple days’ worth of facial hair he resembled a younger version of legendary Dominican musician Juan Luis Guerra, who fronted a band called 440.
My two years as a baseball reporter spanned Bautista’s transformation from utility player to MLB’s home run king. And even as he grew into an all-star in 2010, Bautista did the fun and unglamourous stuff we associate with lowerprofile players.
When Cuban shortstop Yunel Escobar arrived, Bautista often translated for reporters interviewing him. And he helped expand my Spanish vocabulary, schooling me on both standard words and Dominican idioms resistant to direct translation. I now know mujeriego means “womanizer,” and understand words like mayimbe and matatán even if I can’t explain them in English.
On Tuesday, the 37-year-old Bautista signed with the New York Mets, extending the MLB tenure of a player Jays fans will treasure for his dramatic homer and bat flip in the 2015 playoffs against the Texas Rangers. But Bautista’s career — whenever it ends — is also a fascinating case study on the baseball industry’s cultural double standards and shifting trends, and how one player tried to defy both.
Even before he blossomed, Bautista had become the type of player many major league teams needed: a fully bilingual bridger of cultural gaps.
And as his profile rose, Bautista revealed himself as the type of player that could make conservative ownership classtypes uneasy: sharply intelligent and keenly aware of his position in the global baseball industry.
In April 2015, Bautista penned a Players Tribune essay titled “The Cycle,” detailing the obstacles facing players from the Dominican Republic — many as young as 16 — when they sign with major league clubs.
Bautista had to break that cycle just to start his U.S. baseball career.
As an 18-year-old in Santo Domingo, he already had been scouted and passed over by MLB teams, and without an NCAA-style amateur system at home his baseball journey faced a dead end. But good grades and proficiency in English earned Bautista a scholarship to Chipola Junior College in Florida, where he played alongside future Blue Jay Russell Martin; Bautista became a 20th-round pick in the 2000 MLB draft.
Like his 2015 essay, Bautista’s mere presence in the majors highlighted flaws in the way big league teams engaged Latin American talent. Where clubs expect Dominican and Venezuelan players to turn pro at 16, they don’t pressure North American teens to develop that quickly. If a U.S.-based prospect isn’t draft-ready at 18, he can develop in college and turn pro when he feels prepared. That Bautista turned pro the way mainland North Americans do — via college and the draft — hinted at how much Latin American talent MLB teams might miss when they dismiss teenagers as too old to start pro careers.
Bautista beat long odds by employing a diverse skill set — his grades and his English — to win an unlikely opportunity, and followed that same formula with the Jays, where his versatility kept him in the lineup long enough to grow into one of baseball’s most dangerous hitters.
In 2009, Bautista played 113 games, spread among four defensive positions, plus designated hitter. The following season he surpassed 140 games for just the second time in his career and erupted for 54 homers and 351 total bases, leading the majors in both categories.
That breakout performance won Bautista, then 30, a five- year, $65 million (U.S.) contract extension, plus a $15 million option for the 2016 season, which the Jays exercised. But where Bautista turned pro by defying a baseball industry convention that effectively disqualifies 18-yearold Dominican prospects, the timing of his power surge kept him from cashing in on an MLB trend that rewarded aging sluggers.
In 2012 the Angels signed nearly 32-year-old Albert Pujols to a 10-year, $240 million deal. Two years later, Miguel Cabrera, then about to turn 31, re-upped with the Tigers for 10 years and $292 million.
As free agency approached Bautista made clear that his production — 227 homers, 1,644 total bases and a .904 on-base and slugging percentage over five seasons — would merit a similar windfall, even at 36. He argued his physical fitness helped him function like a younger player, and tied the team’s ability to pay him to Rogers’ communications share price, which soared during the Jays’ 2015 playoff run.
“There’s a direct correlation with the success of their earnings per share after we started experiencing success,” Bautista said at the time. “Are they going to put it out in the media and say, ‘Because of the Jays we made all this money’? No, but you can read between the lines.”
But by then the industry had shifted. Long, lucrative contracts for players past 30 went out of vogue, and in 2017 Bautista re-signed with Toronto for one year plus a mutual option. We all remember what happened next.
Bautista’s production tanked — he hit just .203 and finished the season with a minus-1.7 WAR, his first negative rating in that metric since 2008. The Jays bought out his option year and Bautista entered a free agent market turned so stagnant by tightwad teams that the players’ union suspected collusion.
Bautista stayed in playing shape but didn’t find work until mid-April, when he signed a minor-league deal with Atlanta. The deal ignited hope for an emotional return to Toronto when the Braves visit in mid-June, but the club released Bautista on Sunday after a 12-game stretch that included two home runs and 12 strikeouts. Mets are in Toronto July 3-4. That move hasn’t yet triggered a Bautista Bump on ticket resale sites, and a lot can happen between now and that summer series. Injured Mets outfielder Yoenis Cespedes might return at full strength and render Bautista redundant. Or the Mets, who already field 35-year-old Jose Reyes and 36-year-old Adrian Gonzalez, might opt to make their lineup younger.
Either of those developments could put Bautista in a familiar position — butting heads with an industry trend, seeking a way to around it.