MLB

Blue Jays’ Jose Bautista Completes Journey From Nowhere With 50th Home Run (Video)

Hitting 50 home runs doesn’t happen all that often in baseball anymore. In fact, in the last two seasons, it didn’t happen anywhere at all. (Here’s a list.)

But today, that list got one name bigger, and it’s a name no one could have suspected before the season began – the Blue Jays’ Jose Bautista. Bautista is a 29-going-on-30-year-old journeyman who never hit more than 16 home runs in a year before this season, has played for four different teams, and has easily the most awesome birthday on the calendar.

And this season, something clicked for the guy. Who knows what it was…but it’s his year. He’s crushing the ball when he hits it, and excellent plate discipline has allowed him to post a fine .383 on-base percentage despite a mediocre .265 batting average. Will he ever have a season like this again? Well…probably not, but let’s hope he can ride the wave of this season to many more quality big league years.

In the slightly-more-advanced stats dept. – Bautista had never posted an OPS+ (on base plus slugging, adjusted for outside factors like which ballpark someone played in) of even 100 (the league average) before this season, This year: 166. Yes, that’s as big a difference as it sounds.

Abd his home run today came in what had to be one of the most satisfying ways: it provided his team’s only run in a 1-0 victory. It was a milestone-filled game – in addition to Bautista’s homer, Ichiro Suzuki collected his 200th hit for the 10th straight season, a major league record.

But everyone knows Ichiro. That wasn’t the case for Bautista before this year (and probably still isn’t even now). It’s just fun when someone comes out of nowhere to do something extraordinary. Bautista’s done that, and we salute him for it.

Video of his home run below. The quality is low, but the enthusiastic reaction of the fans inn the mostly-empty stadium is a nice perspective through which to view the event.