Jose Bautista First to 20 Home Runs This Season

Jose Bautista hit his 20th home run of the season for the Toronto Blue Jays on Saturday night. He is the first player in the major leagues to reach that total this season, and another good night at the plate helped bump his batting average to .353. Bautista is really racking up the statistics that could garner him a Most Valuable Player Award and makes him deserving of a start at the All-Star Game.

The home run leaders in the American League have a lot of work to do in order to catch Bautista, and it might end up being his second straight home run title. Only two other players have more than 12 (Curtis Granderson with 16 and Mark Teixeira with 15), showing just how much of an aberration it now is to hit home runs of this quantity.

Maybe it's even more impressive that Bautista is putting up these statistics while opposing pitchers try to work around him. He has 45 walks, helping propel his on-base percentage to .502. It is a rare breed of player that has been able to accomplish a state like that over the entire history of Major League Baseball. If he could continue posting stats like these, it could turn his season into one of the best that the game has ever seen.

Many baseball analysts were still unwilling to give the 30-year-old a lot of credit for what he had accomplished in 2010. Maybe it was a combination of the fact he had already played for the Baltimore Orioles, Kansas City Royals, Tampa Bay Rays and Pittsburgh Pirates before he finally latched on with the Blue Jays. When Toronto decided to give him the full-time starting job in 2010, it seems he really found his swing. Now he is easily one of the best home run hitters in baseball, and he is shattering the old belief that players were supposed to pique at 27.

Last year Bautista his 54 home runs to go with 124 RBI and 100 walks. He was only able to hit .260 though, as he struck out 116 times. Now he has become more selective of the pitches he swings at, and suddenly he has added an extremely impressive batting average to his lofty home run totals. If he can continue this for the rest of the year, there will be no argument that he is one of the best players baseball has seen in a while.

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