Read This Now - Meet Jose Bautista

Bautista has emerged on the scene this season as baseball's current undisputed best hitter, simply put he's crushing it this year, just like he did last season.

In this day and age PED's are never far from conversations surrounding late blooming hitters, or just one's who seem to come out of no where and Bautista is no exception.  This great piece from Jeff Passan in The Post Game examines Bautista's story and takes a look at how he became an exceptional hitter...

History says with no malice that Bautista should not be doing this. He disturbed baseball's neat order. It was no random stretch, no burp in the matrix. It demanded an explanation. And so for the last 14 months, the scouts and the statisticians and the fans have probed and prodded and dissected Bautista's ascent, the sort that gives divers the bends. They turned accomplishment into interpretational gymnastics. One set of numbers, 50 theories behind it, all trying to answer the same question.

How?

Baseball's calculus changed with steroids. No ophthalmologist can fix the lens through which the public now views accomplishment. Success -- out-of-nowhere, what-the-hell success especially -- begets skepticism. There must be a reason, a plug-and-play, easy-to-digest, quick-and-dirty catch-all that makes way for the next question. 

"Sometimes there is a reason," Bautista says. "It's just not simple."

It's a little long, but well worth the read.  Be sure to check it out.

(via HBT)