I wouldn't call his performance over the first 4-6 years "barely good enough to stay in the major leagues" Average season? 9.83HR .238 average. Remove his first year when he played for 4 different teams and did pretty much nothing and 05 when he barely played at all, and those numbers would look slightly better for power, less for average 14.75 HR/year .229 average
Not counting 2010 and 2011 his 162 game average for HR is 16.66
A lot of guys have made a career of numbers like that. And a lot of guys have hung around for 10 years or so doing that or less while teams waited for them to live up to their potential.
I'll even go out on a limb with a guy who has been implicated, but not proven to have used. David Ortiz. 6 years in Minn trying to stay in the majors mostly because of management changes plus not being a guy the team had invested in all that heavily. While there they had him trying to be an opposite field slap hitter. Comes to Boston and gets told to swing away. Yes, like many his numbers for his best years are suspect, but some of the improvement has to be attributed to a difference in expectatons and hitting style.
Bautista has had a couple rough years very early in his career. 4 teams his first year! Kingman played for 4 teams in one year, but in the middle of his career. And Bautista has had one split season since. You'd have to be incredibly confident not to be affected by that.
SteveB
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