We discussed Jose Bautista a few weeks ago, but after his three-home-run night in Target Field - the hardest park in the majors to homer in last year - he's hitting .368/.520/.868, numbers approached by only two players in league history - Barry Bonds and Babe Ruth. Bautista already has 16 home runs, leading the second-place hitter in that category, Curtis Granderson, by three. And Bautista has missed eight of his team's first 40 games.
The skeptics will cite the small sample (32 games) and assure us Bautista will not hit another 50 homers and will not end the year with a batting average above .320. But a sample's size is but one variable in determining the data's significance. The other is its magnitude.
For example if you flip a presumably evenly-weighted coin 20 times and get 16 heads, that's pretty unusual (about a 1 in 167 chance). But the sample is small, so maybe you just got lucky. But to get 20 heads, the chances are less than 1 in a million. The sample is still small, but the magnitude of the result (all heads) is enormous, and so the odds your coin is evenly weighted are very slim. You should therefore expect a lot more "heads" going forward.
Accordingly, it's getting to the point where the magnitude of Bautista's performance - a Ruthian 1.388 OPS - is large, and considering his 54-homer 2010, likely indicative of continued and sustainable growth. Put differently, if we drafted today, and counted only numbers from May 17 forward, I would strongly consider Bautista with the No. 1 overall pick, especially given his dual 3B/OF eligibility.
After a .256/.362/.367 year at age 36 in 2010, Todd Helton was largely left for dead by the fantasy community. His chronic bad back had apparently sapped his power, and like many players in their mid-to-late 30s, had an irreversible skills erosion for which not even his hitter-friendly home park could not cover. Except that wasn't the case. Helton, who put up a .325/.416/.489 line over 544 at-bats as recently as 2009, simply needed to get healthy. Already he has six homers and a .325/.375/.556 mark over 117 at-bats, and that's enough of a sample to show he's not the hobbled 2010 incarnation. How long he stays healthy is anyone's guess, but so long as he does, expect the production to continue.
Apparently the Royals have spotted a flaw in Joakim Soria's delivery, and that's not surprising given his 9:7 K:BB ratio in 14.2 IP. Soria's been one of the best relief pitchers in baseball over the last four seasons, and it's possible he turns it around. But whether a delivery flaw is the cause of the poor performance isn't the most pertinent question. Rather, it's what's causing the alleged delivery flaw and whether it's correctable. In other words, just because the Royals think they've named the problem, that doesn't mean they can solve it. If you can get close to preseason market value for Soria, do it. Every elite closer not named Mariano Rivera breaks down sooner or later, and this might well be the year it happens to Soria.