Ballots for Bautista Mailbag

Over the past week, I reached out on Twitter to ask folks their Jose Bautista questions for this edition of the Ballots for Bautista mailbag. There was a myriad of questions ranging from the serious to the not-so-serious, but let's get right to it, shall we?

@EthanDR leads off with the million dollar question that the opposition is clambering to figure out:

"What is Bautista's biggest weakness?"

If we go merely by Jose Bautista's hot and cold zones below, we can see that Joey Bats has the most trouble with inside pitches up and down in the zone.

The inside part of the plate is traditionally a tough place for right-handed hitters, so that's not really much of a shock.

Jose Bautista's Hot Zone page at Fox Sports tells a bit of a different story, essentially it's a T-shape through the middle of the strike zone. It shows Jose with low averages at all four corners of the strike zone.

If we're trying to find a chink in Jose Bautista's armour somewhere, we have yet to see it. He's shown the ability to hit for power on both sides of the field, he's a great baserunner, and if he can't grip and rip a pitch, then he'll likely draw a walk.

So to answer your question, Jose Bautista's weakness is that he is almost too good.

@GoJaysGo1982 cuts to the chase and asks the question:

"Why are still accusations of J Bau using roids? Isn't it as simple as peeing in a cup?"

As Jose Bautista continues to gain more and more notoriety south of the border, I can see see why the casual fan might suspect steroids might be at play. A career journeyman comes out of complete nowhere to sock 54 home runs, and now Bautista is on pace to hit even more than that this year.

What people forget though is these players are tested multiple times each year for performance enhancing drugs. In fact, Jose Bautista admitted to being tested last week along with a few of his teammates.

@RustyArmy is curious if the bearded one has any particular rituals we should know about:

"Is Bautista superstitious, and if so, how could he shave his beard?

Bautista doesn't strike me as the kind of ball player that's superstitious, but there's something very interesting about those stretches before he heads into the batter's box.

I heard an interviewer recently try to find out if Bautista has any sort of pre-game meal that fuels his awesomeness, but Jose did not admit to consuming that one meal a la Wade Boggs with fried chicken.

As far as the beard is concerned, I was surprised myself to see him clean shaven in the weekend, but of course the beard grew back midway through the fifth inning.

Me personally, if I don't shave for about a week, the beard starts driving me nuts, so I'm not sure how Jose Bautista does it day-in and day-out. He is a much stronger willed and patient man than I.

@TheTomHowden asks:

"How far away is cloning? We could use a team full of Bautista's

If human cloning is on the horizon, I'm sure Alex Anthopoulos is already in negotiations with the scientists to somehow extract several Jose Bautista's and put them on the Blue Jays roster.

Then again, the downside if having nine Jose Bautista's in the starting lineup is ... which one do you cheer for? As great as it would be to have Bautista clones, I'm cool with the original for the time being.

@RichieHimself asks:

"If baseballs were people, how many people has Bautista killed in his career?"

Let me begin by saying I'm sure outside of the game of baseball, Jose Bautista is a very gentle man. His soft-spoken demeanor doesn't strike me at all of the kind of player you'd think a slugger like him would be, so I can't even picture him hurting a fly.

That being said, Jose Bautista has hit 132 home runs in his career, so if those baseballs were people, he would have sent 132 of them to death row.