Jose Bautistaaaaaaa!!?

Machinehead - there is no if. He's clean. A whole range of changes contributed to the season he had. The consistent play time. The change in mechanics. His philosophy at the plate. Simple luck. I agree that 54 is a huge outlier compared to the rest of his seasons - but if steroids can take you from a ~13 HR hitter to a ~50 HR hitter in one year, shouldn't every team have about 5 30+ HR guys on it? If you look at some numbers that aren't just his hitting stats, you'll see that there have been significant changes in areas where steroids could not possible have contributed. In 2009, about 41% of his contact resulted in a grounder. Last year, that number fell to 32%. In 2009, 42% of his contact resulted in fly balls. Last year, 54%. If you look at his GO/AO, he was above 1.0 (meaning that he had more ground outs than air outs - the higher the number, the more balls on the ground and vice versa) in both 2009 and 2008. In the 3 years before that, the ration averaged at .82. In 2010? .64 - meaning that of his outs when putting the ball into play, 60% were in the air, and only 40% were on the ground. Steroids don't teach you mechanics. They don't teach you to turn on a ball, or pop it up rather than smack it down. And, look at his play time. In 2010 he played in 161 games. Before that, his most was 142, with his average over the previous 6 seasons being 96 games a year. He had almost 570 at bats last year. Before that, his at bats were 88, 28, 400, 532, 370, 336.