Blue Jays slugger Jose Bautista has a big league leading 19 homers, but is he clean? The steroids cloud continues to hang over the Toronto outfielder. The NY Daily News talked with a scout who believed Bautista was cheating last year, who is now ready to believe him.
“I’ve come around on the leg-kick theory,” the scout said. “The guy is really maturing into a great hitter. Everyone is pitching him a lot more carefully this year, but he’s taking his walks, he’s not chasing bad pitches. And when he gets something to hit, he doesn’t miss it.”
What is this magic leg-kick theory?
The leg-kick theory is at the root of Bautista’s transformation. As a young player he had trouble timing up his leg kick with the pitch, which was at least partly why he was traded or waived by five different organizations before finding himself with the Blue Jays. At age 28, as Jays hitting coach Dwayne Murphy and then-manager Cito Gaston worked with Bautista to get ready sooner, so the leg kick was down in time, something clicked late in the 2009 season, as Bautista hit 10 home runs in September.
