David Price is a Toronto Blue Jay, Troy Tulowitzki is a Toronto Blue Jay, and Josh Donaldson is a Toronto Blue Jay. Do you know who else is a Toronto Blue Jay? Jose Bautista. Yes, I’m sure you were aware of his presence on this team, but what you may not know, or fail to recognize, is what he truly means to this 2015 Blue Jays squad. No, I’m not talking about “clubhouse chemistry” or any of the intangibles that Bautista also probably contributes to. I’m talking about Jose Bautista’s being the inception of this squad, but not being appreciated for his work.
Does this sound familiar?
Who do you think that Player A is? If your guess was Jose Bautista, you’d be wrong. If you’d seen Jake Shapiro’s Ode to Troy Tulowitzki on Blue Jays Plus earlier this week, then you may have guessed Troy Tulowitzki. You’d be right. While reading through that rather fantastic piece, I kept seeing shades of Jose Bautista and the Blue Jays, and I’m sure I wasn’t alone.
The words quoted above are not necessarily something you’d see being published right now about Joey Bats. That whole winning and excitement thing tends to quash fan and media negativity towards our former patron star. However, last year, as the Jays once again failed to make a push for the playoffs, that negativity was still present. Fans, media, and coaches alike constantly complained about Jose Bautista’s arguing of the strike zone; among other things.
Take this particular incident from August 24th of last season as one example. Here’s the clip:
In that video, Bautista gets a slightly low-pitch that is called strike three. He then voices his opinion to umpire Bill Welke. He’s not yelling. He’s not blowing up. Nonetheless, Jose gets ejected. While the incident itself is interesting enough, what was more intriguing was the reaction after the fact. Some came to Bautista’s defence, but the majority threw blame his way. That majority included Jays’ manager John Gibbons, who commented that Bautista should, “say [his] piece and get the hell out of there“.
Let’s recap: Jose Bautista does everything in his power to win for the Jays. That includes his trying to get credited for a much needed full-count walk in a 1-0 game. He then says a few words, gets ejected, and suddenly he’s the bad guy.
As we saw with the Rockies and Troy Tulowitzki, it’s easy to throw blame to a star when his team isn’t performing as well as fans would like. However, that certainly doesn’t make it justified. As Jake Shapiro noted his Tulowitzki piece, towards the end of Tulo’s Rockies career, fans took the star-player blame so far as to literally push Tulo out of town via #TraidTulo. That hasn’t happened with Bautista to quite the same extent, but there are certain vocal sections who’d still be happy to see him leave.
To me, that makes so very little sense; to have so little appreciation for the man who made this 2015 season possible is silly. Yes, you read that right, without Jose Bautista there are no 2015 playoff hopes for Toronto. There is no “Josh Donaldson is a Blue Jay”, nor is there a Price, Tulowitzki, or Russell Martin version. None of this is possible without Jose Bautista.
Let’s explain, shall we. For this, we shall travel back to the distant past of…2012. November 2012 to be exact. You may recall that in this ancient month the Jays made a blockbuster deal to trade for Jose Reyes, Mark Buehrle, and Josh Johnson. That deal is not possible without Jose Bautista. In the three seasons prior to that deal, Bautista averaged 6.7 fWAR per 150 games. Neither Reyes nor Johnson nor Buehrle were ‘Face of the Franchise’ level pieces. They were complementary pieces to perennial MVP candidate Jose Bautista. Sure, the Blue Jays didn’t end up being contenders like we all thought in 2013, but that certainly wasn’t at the behest of Bautista. He played at an MVP level pace before being shut down in August with a hip injury.
Nevertheless, whether or not you agree with the cost to acquire these players, Jose Reyes, Mark Buehrle, and R.A. Dickey were three star level players that garnered acquiring as a direct result of Jose Bautista being a Toronto Blue Jay. The Jays wanted to capitalize on the chances that they had while a player as good as Bautista was around. While that didn’t happen in 2013, it is what has let the Blue Jays remain competitive in 2015. In 2012, the Blue Jays had a payroll of ~$84 million, which ranked 22nd in MLB. In 2013 the payroll was ~$128 million, which ranked 8th in MLB, with built in raises for 2014. At that point, having acquired three players with longish term contracts, there was no real way for the team to scale things back. The Jays had to attempt to compete. In turn, that desire to compete as well as a larger payroll let them acquire Josh Donaldson, which made them just good enough to go after Troy Tulowitzki and David Price.
Once again, if Jose Bautista is not a Blue Jay, there is no Price, Donaldson, Tulowitzki, or Martin. Remember that not only is Bautista the sole reason that the 2015 Blue Jays were buyers and not sellers, but he’s also the biggest fan and lobbyist that this team has. As you may recall during Anthopolous’ post-Price deal press conference, he briefly mentioned Bautista’s reaction to the deal.
That’s the kind of player that you want on your team. The kind of player who’s so invested in his squad, that he’ll publicly speak out against the front office. Or the kind of player who leads the charge to defer players’ own salaries to acquire another piece for the team. In that way, he’s no different than Troy Tulowitzki was for the Rockies. Jake Shapiro mentioned how instrumental Tulo has been in Nolan Arenado‘s rise to stardom, as well as how Tulo was among the first to call Rockies first rounder Brendan Rodgers after he was selected. Jose Bautista is the Blue Jays version of that tale. He does everything he can for the team, but is still blasted with negativity each time he makes one wrong move. That’s not fair. Don’t drive away the glue to this organization, Jays fans. Appreciate Jose, because he is in fact a Blue Jay.
P.S. Jose Bautista’s being a Blue Jay means he does things like this. Praise Jose.
All stats as of August 6th 2015
Picture courtesy of Keith Allison via CC 2.0
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