Jose Bautista: Your 2011 MLB All-Star Game Starter

We did it folks, we really did it! Jose Bautista has officially been announced as a starter for the 2011 MLB All-Star Game.

Thanks to your outpouring support, the Toronto Blue Jays will be sending Jose Bautista to Phoenix Arizona in a few weeks where he will start in the outfield for the American League All-Star squad.\

Overall, Jose Bautista collected 7,454,753 votes which set a new record for All-Star ballots cast for any player in any All-Star Game ... ever! Well done, Jose Bautista fans ... well done. Bautista led the voting from start to finish and will cap off an incredible first half with an appearance in the Midsummer Classic.

Jose Bautista becomes the first Blue Jay to be voted into the All-Star Game by the fans since Carlos Delgado was elected as the starting first baseman in the 2003 All-Star Game.

In addition, Jose Bautista has been invited to participate in the Home Run Derby. Of course we all remember it was a giant oversight when Bautista was snubbed for the derby last year, but this year he will bring the Bautista Bombs to Phoenix when he participates in the Home Run Derby.

Thanks again so much to everyone for helping get the word out about the Ballots for Bautista campaign and casting your vote for Jose Bautista. I truly believe this has been a huge shift in All-Star Game voting by sending Jose Bautista.

For the longest time, Bautista was the best player in baseball that nobody knew about. But now that he'll be starting in the All-Star Game, this will truly be Bautista's time to shine, and hopefully that turns some heads and shows fans that Jose and the Blue Jays have some great talent.

Once again, congrats to Jose Bautista for making the 2011 MLB All-Star Game squad. It's an incredible accomplishment, but he is very deserving of the honours.

Thanks everyone for casting for your votes for Jose Bautista, and we'll see you back in 2012 for the next Ballots for Bautista campaign!

Today is the Deadline to Vote for Jose

Don't forget folks, today is the final day to cast your 2011 MLB All-Star Game ballots for Jose Bautista. The deadline is midnight this evening, so if you haven't already submitted your 25 votes per email address, be sure to get cracking!

This week's results were released yesterday and Jose Bautista cleared the 5 million vote mark and currently stands at 5,263,840 votes. He's the head and shoulders leader in the AL outfield position, all American League Players, and even all of Major League Baseball. Thatta boy, Jose!

With 681,421 votes separating Jose Bautista from Curtis Granderson between first and second in votes for American League outfielders, Bautista will almost certainly start in the outfield for the American League squad. But you can never be too sure, so make your votes count until midnight tonight.

Final results will likely be posted early next week, so stay tuned to Ballots for Bautista for all the news. And thanks so much for casting your ballots for Jose Bautista thus far!

This Week in Bautista

The big news off the top is that Jose Bautista will temporarily trade in his right fielder's glove and will pick up a third baseman's glove in the immediate future.

The Blue Jays said Bautista will take a few days to transition over to the hot corner, which means he'll likely still play right field during the Cardinals series. Here's what Alex Anthopoulos had to say about the situation:

"It's not going to be two games at third, two games in the outfield. It's going to be every game at third," Anthopoulos said of Bautista. "He will be entrenched as the guy at third base going forward for us."

One cannot be certain how long "going forward for us" means, but I suspect it signals that Jose Bautista will play third base the remainder of the season, depending on Brett Lawrie's timetable for a return.

If you pick up this week's edition of Sports Illustrated, you'll see a fantastic piece by Joe Posnanski chronicling Jose Bautista's journey to the major leagues. This is my favourite quote of all from Bautista in the article:

"The ball smashed against the leftfield wall so hard, Bautista thought he could hear the impact over the sounds of the cheers. Holy s---, Bautista remembered thinking as he stood at second base. What was that?"

And just to prove that Jose Bautista is in fact human, the Toronto Star talked to him about his success and a few of his favourite things. We learned that Jose has two dogs, Winsin y Yandel is his favourite music to listen to, and he wears boxers and briefs.

Lastly, Jose Bautisa responded to comments made earlier this week by Ricky Romero about the team's lack of run production. Bautista backed his teammate and encouraged Romero to speak his mind on the situation:

"Some people might have taken it the wrong way. I'm not speaking about anybody in particular. From reading the comments, I can see how somebody would take it the wrong way, but me knowing Ricky, I knew he didn't mean anything by it.

So if it was up to me, he didn't have to clarify anything. For him to do it, it shows a lot of who he is and he wants to make sure his teammates don't take anything the wrong way that might get offended by it."

And that's all for "This Week in Bautista" - hopefully Jose can convince his teammates to help him score some runs this weekend in St. Louis.

Bautista Hits A Home Run, Robs A Home Run

In what was an otherwise forgettable game for the Toronto Blue Jays, Jose Bautista still managed to put on a show with a couple of unforgettable plays in the outfield.

More on Bautista's highlight reel catch in a moment, but Jose was the lone bright spot in a dreary game and series against the Atlanta Braves. Bautista appears to have his power stroke back, as he cracked his 22nd home run of the season.

Now, more on Jose Bautista's incredible catch: he robbed Nick Shafer of a home run with a leaping catch where he draped his glove hand right across the outfield wall in right field. It truly is something you have to see to believe.



The weird thing is Bautista nearly robbed Brooks Conrad of a home run in the previous at bat as well. This play was nearly identical to the fly ball hit by Jordan Shafer, except Jose's glove was off by mere inches.



I guess Bautista wasn't going to let that second one get away, but he was awfully close to stealing back to back home runs away from the Atlanta Braves.

Not only did both plays unfold in virtually the same fashion, but both balls hit by Brooks Conrad and Nick Shafer landed just a foot or too apart right on the edge of the outfield wall.

So let this be a lesson for hitters when Jose Bautista is patrolling right field; you might be able to sneak one ball by him for a home run, but you certain;y won't sneak two though.

Over 4 Million Ballots and Counting for Bautista

4 million and counting ... that's how many ballots have been cast for Bautista to date. It's incredible to think Jose is garnering more votes in a week than he did the entire voting period last year.

Despite his recent "struggles" at the plate, Jose Bautista cleared the 4 million vote mark this week and continues to lead MLB All-Star Voting with 4,156,940 votes to his name.

Jose Bautista not only leads all American League outfielders in voting, he leads the entire American League voting. Bautista even has more than 1 million more votes than the National League's top vote-getter, Milwaukee's Ryan Braun.

Much has been reported about Jose Bautista's recent power outage as he's only hit one home run in the past 20 games, but despite that he continues to maintain an incredible batting average and on base percentage.

Check out Blue Jay Hunter's recent post tracking Bautista's AVG, OBP, SLG, OPS and perhaps most important of all, BRD. When you take home runs out of the equation, Jose Bautista has remained remarkably consistent through his first 73 games.

While his slugging percentage and on base plus slugging have tapered off a bit, Jose Bautista's batting average and on base percentage have basically plateaued. The drop in OPS and SLG can be attributed to a lack of extra base hits (only 6 since May 21st).

However, Bautista has strung together 22 singles and drawn 24 walks in that time frame, which explains why his AVG is still sitting around the .330 mark and his on base is at .476.

If you haven't already, be sure to get your ballots in for Bautista, as well as other members of the Blue Jays roster like Adam Lind and Yunel Escobar.

All-Star Game voting ends next Thursday June 30th at midnight so be sure to vote early and vote often!

Bautista Still Leads All-Star Vote

Among a bevy of New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox players, there is one man who stands front and centre as the leader in All-Star votes; and that man is Jose Bautista.

For the second straight week, Jose Bautista is tops in All-Star votes with 2,142,867 total votes. That's an increase of 888,208 votes from last week. He didn't quite double his total, but it's pretty damn close.

Bautista's next closest competition in total votes is Yankees second baseman Robinson Cano with 1,930,762 All-Star votes. Jose has distanced himself from his next closest competition in the starting outfielder's spot by a total of 417,213 votes over Curtis Granderson.

As you can see by the image above, the total voting is littered with New York Yankees players and they do make up the bulk of the vote at most positions. It will be refreshing to see somebody new like Jose Bautista hopefully win a starting job over the perennial Yankee players.

Let's keep the momentum going and continue to cast your ballots for Bautista! I got my All-Star votes in last week, and compared to previous years, it's actually pretty easy to get your 25 votes in quickly. All you have to do is enter your initial ballot, and if you want to continue to keep voting, all you have to do is enter a new confirmation code each team.

Remember, you can vote up to 25 times per email address, and these days most folks have 3-4 email addresses anyway, so that means 100 votes per person. Vote Jose, today!

Jose Bautista Named AL Player of the Month ... Again

He was so nice, they had to give him the award twice! Congratulations to Jose Bautista for being named the American League Player of the Month for May, his second consecutive award.

Bautista has now been named the AL Player of the Month in 4 of the last 5 months in which the award has been handed out, dating back to last July. In fact, Jose Bautista is the first player to win back to back Player of the Month awards since Josh Hamilton did it in April and May of 2008.

Joey Bats had another incredible month, arguably a little better than April, actually. Bautista hit 11 home runs and drove in 23 RBI's while drawing 18 walks. He also posted a slash line of .360/.476/.791 in the month of May, and if anything Bautista only drew less walks in May than he did in April.

Even with two American League Player of the Month Awards to his name in 2011 alone, Jose Bautista has not been named an American League Player of the Week.

I think that's a testament to the kind of player Bautista is; he isn't a sporadic hitter, rather a very consistent hitter week-in and week-out.

Congratulations once again to Jose Bautista for being awarded the American League Player of the Month. Is it too much to ask him to win the award three straight months?