Just Like Weather, It’s April In June for the Toronto Blue Jays

May 31, 2013; San Diego, CA, USA; Toronto Blue Jays right fielder Jose Bautista (19) during his at bat in the first inning against the San Diego Padres at Petco Park. Mandatory Credit: Christopher Hanewinckel-USA TODAY Sports

I promised myself I would start writing some positive and uplifting Toronto Blue Jays posts. After all the MLB Draft started last night. Now is the time for hope and optimism across baseball.

But then I had to ruin it by looking at Jose Bautista‘s month of June statistics.

This might be harder to do than I thought…

To be fair the Blue Jays have only played four games in June. Bautista has more than enough time to turn his month around. But if there was ever a glimmer of hope to get this season back on track it was probably on the recently completed National League road trip.

The Blue Jays faced off against the Atlanta Braves, San Diego Padres and San Francisco Giants. Not exactly a cakewalk of opponents but at least it’s a break from the powerful American League East.

The Jays haven’t performed well at NL ballparks in recent years but with the current hoard of NL-to-AL converts perhaps this time around they could buck the trend. Instead the blue birds finished their west coast trip 3-6.

And to make matters worse I almost confused Bautista’s numbers with J.P. Arencibia.

I’m not trying to get on Jose here. He had an unbelievable month of May. Less than two weeks ago I wrote about how he was having a better 2013 season than Edwin Encarnacion. But after this very unusual stretch from Bautista that gap is starting to narrow.

Jose has yet to draw a walk in June. He is 2 for 19 for a .105 average, .113 wOBA and mind-blowing -42 WRC+. He has two RBIs and one run scored. To add to the puzzle of strange stats, Bautista also surprisingly leads the Jays with two stolen bases in June (FanGraphs).

This is weird…

I asked fellow Jays Journal writer Daniel George on Twitter a few days ago if he knew what was going with Bautista.

Thanks for the headline Daniel. But hey, at least R.A. Dickey is still good, right?