2006 in Review- Jose Bautista

Now that 2006 is over, I'll be looking at one or two Pirates and their 2006 season each day. I'll look at what we expected, what we got, and what that might mean for the future. I may or may not assign a meaningless grade to their performance. Today: Jose Bautista

2005 key stats: .283/.364/.503 with 23 HR, 90 RBI, 48 BB and 101 K in 505 PA at Altoona (also had 86 PAs in Indy and Pittsburgh)
2006 PECOTA: .244/.315/.389 with 12 HR and 53 RBI in 486 PA
2006 key stats: .235/.335/.420 with 16 HR, 46 BB and 110 K in 446 PA

Jose was one of the more pleasant surprises this year. He had a good year mostly at AA last year, but 24 is old for a "prospect" at that level (he missed 2004 because some moron left him unprotected in the '03 Rule 5 draft, leaving him to sit on 4 different rosters while getting less than 100 PAs on the full season). He started the year off at Indy, but was quickly called up for one reason or another (I don't really remember why, I'll be honest). He responded with a pretty good year for a guy with only something like 160 PAs above AA for his career. His batting average was kind of low but he showed some good power (Brad Eldred slugged .458 in his short stint last year in about half as many plate appearences as Bautista had this year). People complained a lot about his strikeouts, but his K/BB ratio was pretty close to what it was at Altoona last year, which I think is pretty impressive given the two level leap to the bigs. I realize he tailed off pretty badly (.192/.304/.325 with only 5 homers after July 17th) but I still think this was a pretty good year. He can certainly be a better utility guy that Rob Mackowiak was and it's even possible that he'd make a decent starter at third. He's got much better plate discipline than anyone on the team not named Jason Bay (despite only ~450 PAs he was second on the team in walks by 12, and yes, I know he was second in strikeouts as well, but remember, AA last year) which is something that just can't be taught (especially not by Manto). His season this year is overshadowed by Paulino's high batting average, but even with is bad slump at the end he had a higher OPS than Ronny (.755 to .754) and is only a few months older. I didn't have very high expectations for Jose coing in, but he certainly impressed me this year.

Stats from the Baseball Musings Day by Day Database, Yahoo! Sports, and my trusty copy of Baseball Prospectus 2006.