[ B A T T H R O W I N T E N S I F I E S ]

Any chance Rougned Odor will end up with the Cubs for the stretch drive?

Jose Bautista will be inducted into The C. Montgomery Burns Level for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence.

Is there a Jays HoF and a LoE? If so, is LoE like "inner circle Jays HoF?" Do they retire numbers and, if so, are LoE numbers retired or is number retirement yet another tier of Jays' honour? Is this like Knights, Dukes, Earls, Barons and all the rest?

They only retire numbers for hall of famers. Afaik there isn't a team HoF or anything besides the LoE.

Bautista before Toronto: 462 games, .239/.325/.398, 43 HRs, 89 OPS+
Bautista with Toronto: 1235 games, .253/.372/.506, 288 HRs, 136 OPS+

The man loves his poutine.

Bautista before Toronto: 462 games, .239/.325/.398, 43 HRs, 89 OPS+

Bautista with Toronto: 1235 games, .253/.372/.506, 288 HRs, 136 OPS+

The original Bautista trade to Toronto during the waiver trade period in 2008 was fairly unpopular with the sabermetrically-inclined Jays fans at the time.

There was a very vocal contingent of Jays fans calling for Bautista to be non-tendered heading into 2009 since they didn't feel he was worth 2.4 million on a Jays team not going anywhere with budget constraints.

Bautista is the Jeff Kent and Justin Turner level of excellence of players who got multiple chances and never delivered before becoming post 30 superstars.

I think Halladay is the only retired number for the Jays - they only retire your number if you're a hall of famer, so they only had Alomar and Halladay, and then rescinded Alomar's number retirement.

Bautista is the Jeff Kent and Justin Turner level of excellence of players who got multiple chances and never delivered before becoming post 30 superstars.

That's a little unfair to Kent. He was a useful, productive player in his mid 20's. Well below the star he would become, but not completely useless like the other 2.

The original Bautista trade to Toronto during the waiver trade period in 2008 was fairly unpopular with the sabermetrically-inclined Jays fans at the time.

There was a very vocal contingent of Jays fans calling for Bautista to be non-tendered heading into 2009 since they didn't feel he was worth 2.4 million on a Jays team not going anywhere with budget constraints.

The same arguments were made in Pittsburgh as to why Bautista had to go, no matter the return. That he could hit lefties pretty well and fake it at four positions didn't enter into it - a bad team just shouldn't spend $2.4 million on a bench player.

I think Halladay is the only retired number for the Jays - they only retire your number if you're a hall of famer, so they only had Alomar and Halladay, and then rescinded Alomar's number retirement.

Did they unretire it or just stop promoting the fact it's retired? They didn't have anyone wearing 12 last year.

I hate the Jays' practice whereby only Hall of Famers get their numbers retired, which leaves you with 5-year Jay Alomar having his number retired but the franchise's best player, who spent all but 15 minutes of his career in Toronto, not getting the same treatment.

Good question... mlb.com still lists Alomar's number as being retired.

Per Wiki, Alomar was removed from LoE and his retired number/HoF banner was taken down. It doesn't say the number was un-retired although obviously at this point they are not honoring him. (They might not use it because they do not want another player to be associated with Alomar plus using the number again will lead to some news stories reminding the public about the story.)

Everyone here reads BIll James, right? I mean of course people quote stuff he wrote a hundred years ago and a lot of it was really great. Didnt he say no one ever learned to hit after age 25? That was not one of his better ideas.

Bautista is the Jeff Kent and Justin Turner level of excellence of players who got multiple chances and never delivered before becoming post 30 superstars.

There's a few articles on the Internet about how Dwayne Murphy changed Bautista's approach and swing path. Adam Lind also credited Murphy with essentially teaching him to hit in the bigs.

Talk about a terrific career. Murphy played a dozen years in the big leagues. He came up with the As, won six Gold Gloves, took a bunch of pitches so Rickey could steal a bunch of bases, and helped finance MC Hammer's debut album. He played a year in Japan after his MLB career ended. He got into coaching after that, and got a chance with the new franchise in Arizona. Promoted to the big league staff in 1998 as a hitting instructor and coach, and got a ring with the 2001 championship team. He moves on to Toronto, then to Texas when the Rangers were winning division titles.

That's a pretty fantastic baseball life.

#15 Yeah I've actually read him. People who say he said that likely haven't.

That "comment" comes out of a simplification of a 39 page article in the 1987 Abstract. It is at heart a probabilistic argument and those always get simplified by those retelling them.

Hell, in the article he has a chart that explicitly says a 27 year old rookie has about a 2% chance of dramatic future development and around a 10% of some improvement. (a 25 year old rookie is at 7 and 30)

Chart is on the top right of page 58 in the Abstract.

Is his chart now dated? Possibly (even likely since there's better access to the underlying data and better methods available). It may be that there's now greater incentive to stay in the game because the payoff is so high. And it may just be that we tend to remember the dramatic exceptions. I haven't done a more recent study on aging and I'm not aware of one either. I suspect people like Szym and Clay Davenport have the tools but haven't actually written it up. They're more interested in making better year to year forecasts and know that there are huge error bars moving to two years.

well what's the exact quote Ron? I feel strongly that he said something very much to that effect.

It's likely a coming together of a number of things he said. In a comment about Wade Boggs he said it's unusual for an impact player to get such a late start. Over time statements like that tend to be repeated without the nuance. "unusual for an impact player to get such a late start" becomes "good players establish themselves before 25"

And then there's the intro to the Ken Phelps All-Star Team which was very dismissive of Henry Cotto (and by extension other toolsy players who've never hit). Specifically "If Henry Cotto is a major-league ballplayer, I'm an airplane". And it does include the bit, "They always figure that if you can run and throw they'll teach you to hit. Of course they can't teach anybody to hit, but they always think they can, so they keep trying.

And it the summary section to the article on rookies I was talking about he wrote:

The known facts are these:

1) Most major league players reach the majors at the age of 22 or older (63% of the players in his study were 23 or older) [...]
2) The great majority of major stars reach the majors at 22 or younger (Again worth noting that he's talking major stars) [...]
3) This means that, sampling older and younger rookies, the percentage of those destined to become major stars must be dramatically higher at the earlier ages.
4) The performance of younger rookies is not dramatically better (in fact, it isn't better at all)
I ain't no logic professor, but that seems to mean that:
5) If the performance of a 21 year-old and a 23 year-old is just the same, the 21 year old has a dramatically better chance to become a major star.

Thanks Ron. these are all great quotes. I will try to look up the exact quote I am referring to. Maybe I just confused myself.

"Joey Bats" has to be high on the list of nicknames for his generation. Especially given that he's best known for the most epic bat flip of all time.

He may have said something before 1987 (though I don't recall him saying anything like that) but the comments in 1987 represent his take after doing a detailed study of the matter.

And he may have made a throwaway comment in one of the player rating books (again I don't recall any such) but those books were contractual obligations focused on player ratings (which he never really liked to do) and at that point he wasn't working with the same rigor or passion and wasn't getting much editing either. Still worth reading but there's more hot takes than rigorous analysis.

Did James get as far as "Alou" in the biographical sections he put in some annuals? I sort of remember him making a statement to the effect that Matty Alou didn't learn to hit from Walker, that Alou could always hit but got screwed up by erratic playing time in San Francisco and then got the playing time he needed in Pittsburgh. I doubt Alou was profiled in the Historical Baseball Abstract, or was he?

He had a bio for Pete Appleton, so he at least got that far. I guess that was in the annuals in the late 80s. I dont recall Alou mentioned in the Historical Abstract.

sanny - in the 2001 hardcover edition of the Abstract, Matty Alou is the #68 CF, but unless James completely revised the profile in later editions or annuals or essays or panel discussions, he gives credit to the change of team, but also to Walker.

In the Abstract, James calls Matty "the Dom DiMaggio of the Alou brothers" and begins as you remember: he wasn't going to displace the Giants incumbent CF in the 60s, so he was stuck in the minors for years. And there he had to fight for PT, as the Giants were so rich in talent development, and sometimes had to resort to creative solutions to get a bat in the lineup, like having Orlando Cepeda play OF. Abstract: "...Matty couldn't get enough at bats to stay sharp, completely lost his rhythm, and demanded to be traded. On December 1, 1965, Alou was traded to the Pirates."

James says the Bucs were managed by Harry "The Hat" Walker "who today would be described as a 'hitting guru.' Harry worked with Alou, getting him to use a heavier bat and chop down on the ball, rather than using a light bat and uppercutting as do most modern hitters." Alou hit .231 in the majors in 1965, then won the NL batting title in 1966 hitting .342, and followed that with seasons of .338, .332, .331

Harry's idea "was to get his players to stop using these damned little bats and trying to pull everything...and he gave interviews about how he turned around Matty's career until everybody was pretty much sick of hearing about it."

edit: Sorry, I guess I'm quoting from the "New Abstract - The Classic, Completely Revised"

Thanks, Snowboy.

The Jays had plenty of HOF players that came through and played for them, although most for not very long: Molitor, Jack Morris, Rickey, Dave Winfield. Roger Clemens is amazingly has the 19th most WAR in club history despite only playing two seasons there (winning the pitching Triple Crown both years). And McGriff was just elected to the HOF, so he now qualifies, and I think is identified with Toronto, or maybe tied between Toronto and Atlanta.

Frank Thomas had his last productive season in TOR.

Bautista before Toronto: 462 games, .239/.325/.398, 43 HRs, 89 OPS+
Bautista with Toronto: 1235 games, .253/.372/.506, 288 HRs, 136 OPS+

There's an even more stark (and fun) dividing line with Bautista's numbers.

After moving to Toronto in 2008, he hit .214/.237/.411 in 21 G (with 3 HR) in August/September.

In 2009, From the start of the season through September 3, he hit .216/.345/.301 in 289 PAs with 3 HR.

He was given the day off on September 4, after going hitless in 5 consecutive games.

From September 5 through the end of the year, he hit .280/.360/.660 in 115 PAs with 10 HRs. Followed of course by the monster 2010/2011 seasons and a string of very good (and another great) season after that.

I remember reading somewhere that he did some very specific work on his swing on that off day, whether alone or with the help of a coach, but clearly something very suddenly clicked. I don't know if there's another instance of a player becoming so good, so extremely suddenly.

There's a quote regarding Bautista from a long-ago piece about his transformation from bench guy to hitting beast that sticks with me. I have no clue where I read it and I'm sure I've got it somewhat wrong, but I've paraphrased it to a few kids I've coached who have strong swings but are consistently late on the ball. It was something like, "Swing earlier. Think about the earliest you could possibly swing at a pitch...and then swing even earlier than that." Does anyone else recall that quote? Have I scrambled it in my memory?

From September 5 through the end of the year, he hit .280/.360/.660 in 115 PAs with 10 HRs. Followed of course by the monster 2010/2011 seasons and a string of very good (and another great) season after that.

That's the thing I found the most remarkable about his turnaround. You could pinpoint a September day when things suddenly clicked.

"Swing earlier. Think about the earliest you could possibly swing at a pitch...and then swing even earlier than that." Does anyone else recall that quote?

This one weird trick...

Does anyone else recall that quote? Have I scrambled it in my memory?

I don't have a source but that's pretty close to how I remember it.

He would regularly hit absolute screamers down the left field line. If you were sitting down there it was very much worth your while to pay attention.