Thursday, March 16, 2006
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
BRADENTON, Fla. -- The more aesthetic and even opulent moments of any spring training very often present themselves with no foreshadowing.
It's late in a ballgame. The regulars have long since bolted McKechnie Field for the beach, the bungalow, the bar or the links. Even the Pirates with April destinations that include Indianapolis, Altoona, and parts less known are playing out of position. The Florida sun, warm and life-replenishing at the national anthem, has gone to cooking up a sweat-suckingly hot seventh-inning stench. Seventy percent of the remaining spectators over 70 have forgotten which team is ahead in the game, plus a few other things.
Someone with an offensive tackle's number on his back lifts a lazy fly ball to medium right, carrying no consequence except that which might be contrived from the fact that, oh yeah, there's a runner tagging at third.
And suddenly you get it.
An unforeseen spring training moment that begs for importance.
"I pretty much knew the guy wasn't going," Jose Bautista says of that runner on third. "I just didn't want to throw it soft."
So he threw it hard. Almost insanely hard.
It left his right hand and sketched a sizzling trolley wire to home plate, exploding into the catcher's mitt with an audible whap!
We all gaped. Then the applause cracked the stunned silence, first an arrhythmic staccato and then a rich, appreciative crescendo that roared out onto 9th Street.
This was the Pirates' 2005 Minor League Player of the Year, merely plugging right field at the end of a shaggy spring training game.
"I played right field and center field last year in winter ball," shrugs the 25-year-old Dominican.
Officially, he is the third baseman of the very near future, which means the minute the one-year contract that 36-year-old Joe Randa signed on New Year's Eve looks in any way imprudent.
"He does have a very good arm," general manager Dave Littlefield says. "[Playing the outfield] is something we're at least looking at. We've played him some there in spring training and some at second base, too. He's in one of those situations where we have to make a call on whether he's big-league ready or better served with another year in the minor leagues.
"But the good news is, he looks like a player. It's just a matter of where we go with that."
Lithe and chiseled at 6-0 and 195 pounds, Bautista commands his range at third with major-league quickness, but it's more his quick bat that has gotten him an indefinite appointment in Pittsburgh. In 130 games last summer, 117 of them at Altoona and 13 at Indy, Bautista stroked 30 doubles, 24 homers, and drove in 94 runs.
"I have confidence that when I'm in a major-league lineup that I can compete," Bautista says. "I'm not saying I'm going to the All-Star Game or anything like that, but I can compete. Some guys compete hitting .250 and some guys compete hitting .300. It's what you do with your ability.
"You can't take anything for granted in this game. There are a ton of scouts out there, trying to exploit your weaknesses. They're writing reports. 'Oh, he's been pulling off that pitch for the last three weeks.' "
He has seen an awful lot in these first five years as a professional. He bounced through four organizations one summer as a Rule 5 player in 2004 -- Baltimore, Kansas City, Tampa Bay, and the Pirates -- languishing in big-league dugouts and accumulating only 78 at-bats. At-bats are what he needs more than anything right now, and, if the next 500 come at Indianapolis, no one's going to do a lot complaining, because Bautista already seems to own an understanding of the game's monstrous psychological demands.
"It's not just hitting and defense," he says, "it's all aspects of the game, baserunning, preparation, everything. Talent is going to take you only to a certain place. Your mind-set is what's going to make you a major-leaguer. Sometimes, that takes a little time."
Nearly halfway through another attention-span challenging Grapefruit League season, Bautista found himself hitting .417 and leading the Pirates in total bases, on-base percentage, and slugging percentage.
His time is coming, and it's coming like that splendid throw from right, faster and harder than you expect.
(Gene Collier can be reached at gcollier@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1283.)
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