‘He gave us a swagger’: How Jose Bautista became a Blue Jays legend
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hether a extra subdued model of Bautista would have been the identical participant is intriguing, as are his post-career reflections. While in uniform, he definitely felt in another way. During the 2013 season, as an example, he mentioned, “If I don’t have that (emotion), I’m not the same player.” Regardless, his hybrid of George Bell’s raging pit bull and Delgado’s regular genius served as the inspiration for the Blue Jays throughout his decade with the membership. That his emergence was a cheerful accident — “a superstar player fell in our laps,” mentioned Anthopoulos — compelled the workforce to speed up rebuild plans and made the franchise’s return to relevance all of the extra exceptional.
“That was good fortune on our end,” mentioned Anthopoulos. “I don’t want to speak for Theo Epstein and the Boston Red Sox, but it’s like when they got David Ortiz and he emerged to be unbelievable. How do you react? How do you handle that? Edwin Encarnacion with us was the same way. You change course, because it’s hard to find those guys.”
The acquisitions of each Bautista and Encarnacion hint again to Scott Rolen. In August 2008, the third baseman was harm and Anthopoulos was scouring the waiver wire for a stopgap when Bautista popped up on revocable waivers. Under new GM Neal Huntington, the Pirates had determined to show the web page on the sizzling nook and promoted rising prospect Andy LaRoche, leaving Bautista buried in triple-A. Playing for 5 completely different managers in his 5 seasons with Pittsburgh, he was by no means in a position to get untracked. The teaching employees’s insistence he take the primary pitch and attempt to hit the ball to the other area ran opposite to his pull-instincts. “I just didn’t fit their model or what they’re looking for, specifically,” mentioned Bautista, who added that when it got here to specifics, “all I can do is guess and speculate, just like you could, because I never got a straight answer.” Gaston, the Blue Jays supervisor on the time, had seen Bautista at spring coaching quite a lot of occasions and preferred his pop. Anthopoulos did, too, and requested then-GM J.P. Ricciardi if he might put in a declare. The Pirates needed a participant again. They settled on catching prospect Robinzon Diaz. The deal was carried out Aug. 21, 2008.
The subsequent 12 months, when Rolen requested a commerce, Ricciardi discovered a taker within the Cincinnati Reds, who provided up a pair of younger arms the Blue Jays preferred in Zach Stewart and Josh Roenicke. To make the cash work, although, the Reds insisted on together with Encarnacion within the deal. Reluctantly, Ricciardi mentioned sure. Unbeknownst to any of them, the franchise’s trajectory had been dramatically altered.
