Who's worried about Jose Bautista? Not me.

So far this season, the Jays are winning with strong pitching and weak hitting. That is unexpected.

The biggest reason for the Jays’ hitting woes has been Jose Bautista, or rather the lack of Jose Bautista-like production that the Jays are accustomed to from their top slugger. Edwin Encarnacion has been hitting the snot out of the ball in his stead, but it’s difficult to make up for this batting line:

.183 Batting Average (.269 as a Jay coming into this season)

.313 On Base Percentage (.397 as a Jay coming into this season)

.356 Slugging Percentage (.564 as a Jay coming into this season)

.299 Weight on Base Average (.410 as a Jay coming into this season)

Just over 1/6 of the way into the season, is it time to start worrying about the possibility that Jose has reverted back to his pre 2010 hitting ways? No, it is not. 

Bautista’s line drive rate, groundball rate, and fly ball rate are all in line thus far with his monstrous 2011 season. He’s hit pop-ups at a higher rate (19.5% vs. 15.2%), though, so he probably isn’t squaring up the ball as well or something like that (he popped out 29 times in 149 games last season and is en route to about 40 given the same number of games). I’m not a hitting expert. What I can do is take a look at the raw data and look for silver linings.

Along with the elevated number of pop ups, Bautista has had bad luck with the ball leaving the park on pitches he has hit well. In the last two seasons, 21.7% and 22.7% of his fly balls have gone over the wall for home runs, respectively. So far this year, only 12.2% of his fly balls have left the park. Split the difference, make his HR/FB rate 17%, and instead of 5 home runs he would have 7. Two additional home runs would make a small difference, obviously, but it isn’t enough to salvage his dismal stat-line.

The bigger issue has been his Batting Average on Balls in Play (BABIP). According to fangraphs.com’s xBABIP formula, Bautista’s expected BABIP (xBABIP) is .268, a far cry from his current .171 (league average hovers around .290, and last season Bautista’s BABIP was .309). For his career, his BABIP is .272. If you adjust his home runs up to 7 and then assume that his other whacks fell into play expectedly, he would have 29 hits - in 104 at bats - as opposed to 19 hits. As I’ve said, 2 of those are assumed to be home runs, and even if the other 9 are merely singles, his batting line goes from the above-mentioned atrocity to this:

.278 Batting Average

.390 On Base Percentage

.509 Slugging Percentage

~.390 Weighted on Base Average (I say ~ because I don’t know the exact run environment yet, so I’m going based on historical averages)

That’s all-star production, even if it falls short of the lofty numbers he achieved in 2010 and 2011.

As I said,  Bautista has popped the ball up more this year, so perhaps he is battling issues with his swing. On the other hand, his walk rate is still a robust 14.8%. Even though that’s down from his 20.2% last year, it’s better than 2010, and it’s much better than league average (~8%). His swinging strike rate is lower than it was in 2010 and 2011, but maybe that’s a tad misleading. He’s making contact with more pitches outside the zone (75% this year vs. 70.1% last year and 68.7% in 2010) and less contact with pitches in the zone (83.3% vs. 85.7% and 86.3%). That’s a good way to increase your weakly hit balls (like pop ups and grounders) and decrease your well-hit balls, like home runs and line drives. Perhaps his early struggles have caused him mental angst, throwing off his approach, mechanics, timing, etc…or (more likely) it’s relatively early in the season, he’s had some bad luck, and it’ll turn around sooner rather than later.

It’s tough to draw conclusions on such a tiny sample. However, the numbers beneath the surface bring me more comfort than they me cause concern, and barring news that he’s battling an injury or admittedly swinging “wrong”, I feel confident that Bautista will be putting up all-star numbers again before long.