Blue Jays: Jose Bautista’s bat flip will always be the best

Jose Bautista is a trailblazer when it comes to bat flips.

Ever since Blue Jays slugger Jose Bautista corked an epic bat flip in Game 5 of the 2015 ALDS, bat flips have become more common among major-league hitters after hitting a sure-fire home run.

Bat flips have also been a talk of baseball’s unwritten rules as it’s deemed as showing off the pitcher. Some pitchers like Trevor Bauer of the Cincinnati Reds now understand that bat flips are a part of the game and embrace it while others like former Blue Jay Jimmy Cordero, who’s now apart of the Chicago White Sox, still take offence to it (In a game against the Chicago Cubs, Willson Contreras hit a home run, flipped his bat and his next at-bat facing Cordero resulted in him getting plunked).

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In yesterday’s playoff action, there were five home runs that saw the hitters flip their bats. The best one came from San Diego Padres shortstop Fernando Tatis Jr. As the MLB social media accounts embraced it to their fans on social media, especially to their young fan base, they posted the clip of Tatis Jr flipping his bat with the caption “Move over Jose Bautista.”

If you look at the comments of that tweet, some are disappointed and rightfully so, that MLB compared Tatis Jr’s bat flip to Bautista’s.

While Tatis Jr’s bat flip was gorgeous nonetheless, Bautista’s bat flip will always be at the top of the bat flip rankings, unless someone does a better bat flip in as big as a moment as when Bautista’s bat flip occurred.

When Bautista flipped his bat, the game was all tied up at three and in the top half of the inning, the Texas Rangers scored a run in the most unusual way, when Russell Martin accidentally threw the ball off Sin-Soo Choo’s bat which got away and allowed Rougned Odor to score. Also not to mention, this was the Jays first playoff appearance since 1993.

While Bautista’s bat flip was more of a toss than a flip, it brought the whole conversations of bat flips to the baseball world. I truly think that if Bautista didn’t flip his bat, or if that moment never happened, bat flips wouldn’t be much of a thing in baseball today.