Jose Bautista, a gem? With his .222 batting average? This is just another case where a player's "headline" number is rather misleading.
It's true that Bautista has "only" 52 hits in 234 at bats. But 18 of those, or more than one-third of the total, are home runs. Another 15 have gone for two or three bases. Meaning that when he does hit, it's usually not a single.
Bautista does get on first base a lot—through walks. In fact, he has almost as many walks (49) as hits (counting both bases on balls and hit by pitches as walks). Put another way, his on base percentage (OBP) is .350.
Bautista is not as "athletic" as the average Pirate. And he affected an "economy of effort" that led people to confuse him with a genuinely lazy player, Ronnie Paulino. But what Bautista may or may not la ...
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Article written by Tom Au
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