Bautista's baseball IQ was earned through hard work

Brian Butterfield says if you want a look inside Jose Bautista as a baseball player, go visit his locker.

Everything there is just so. T-shirts hanging nicely over here. Game shirts over there. Pants folded and hung. Hats on their shelf lined up with a perfect curve in the bills.

It is the home of someone who "prepares diligently," as the Toronto Blue Jays' third base coach says. Someone who takes his job seriously. Someone with a high baseball IQ.

Bautista is there too, just over 90 minutes from Thursday game time, draping his panther-like body over a chair as he starts to pull on the game uniform. He's meticulous. Has to be, because it's in his nature.

And that's the key, baseball people say, to why, at 30, Jose Bautista has emerged as possibly the game's best player, coming into Friday hitting .360, with 16 homers and 27 runs batted in over just 35 games.

Yes, the swing is pretty, revamped over his first two years with the club by then-manager Cito Gaston and current hitting coach Dwayne Murphy. But there's so much more to it than that.

"Jose is an example of a guy who has rehearsed mentally a lot over 10 years," Butterfield says, relaxing on the bench before batting practice. "He is programmed to process everything, think of every possible situation, be in the right place and make the right decisions."

Everything in baseball happens slowly, the coach says, until the ball is put in play. Then it happens "really, really fast." And Bautista reacts to that speed as though the game slows down for him — the way the best players in any sport always do.

Knows the game

"He knows how to run the bases, how to position himself in the field, what base to throw to," Butterfield says. "All the intricacies that make up a baseball IQ.

"I think it's easy for people, even the casual observer, to see the bat speed and power and the throwing arm and all the good things that are attractive to the fan," Butterfield says. "But … what we get to see every day is how he is with teammates, how respectful he is to coaches, how respectful he is to this game."

That means hustling. Doing those famous "little things." Backing up the right base, all the time.

"Always moving. Always doing something."

Butterfield pauses for a moment.

"He walks the walk and talks the talk. He's a special, special guy."

They see it from the other dugouts as well.

Tampa Bay bench coach Dave Martinez, who played 1,119 big league games, says insiders knew Bautista was going to be special even before he hit the 54 home runs in his breakout 2010 season.

"You would look at him and you would say, 'this guy's a good baseball player,'" he says.

So it was no surprise that the changes in Bautista's hitting approach — opening up the stance, putting a Sadaharu Oh-like leg kick in as the deliver begins, thinking about what pitches he wants to hit and then looking for them — made such a difference.

"He understood what everybody was trying to tell him, and then he made those adjustments to make it work for him," says Martinez, who sees in Bautista the same things he sees in Rays star Evan Longoria.

"You talk about IQ. [Jose] is a student of the game, he knows what it takes and what it took for him to become the type of hitter he is today."

'Years of experience'

Both coaches believe baseball IQ is natural, to some extent, but mostly it's the result of hard work, a dedication to the game and the ability to strive every day to learn how it's played.

As Bautista himself explains it. "I guess it's the product of a lot of years of experience," he says, just before going hitless in a 3-2 win over the Rays — only the fifth time he's been held without at least a base rap this season, and the first time since May 1.

"I have the personality that you are open to changes and open to information and willing to learn … and to look at why some guys are successful in certain parts of the game."

That means, for example, looking at fast runners and trying to see why they steal bases, or how they go from first to home on a double, or first to third on a single, and then applying it to your own game.

You do the same thing for throwing, for defence, for hitting, "for every aspect of the game."

After many years, you get a finished product that finds success in the major leagues.

Bautista does not buy, however, that this is in any way strictly instinctive, or that only a select few can earn a high baseball IQ.

"A lot of people do it as well [as I do]," he says. "A lot of people have good baseball IQs. It's just that, and I don't want to brag or toot my own horn, when you have the right type of talent and combine it with a good IQ, you get good results."

There are other factors as well, he believes, such as "not letting the excitement of the adrenalin or any particular situation, or play, or moment, take over."

That's learned.

However it's created, the results speak for themselves, and they are leaving baseball people impressed.

"I think, at this level, everybody has natural talent," Martinez says. "Some get it quicker than others, some it takes time to get it, some get it and keep it for a long period of time, some don't have the ability to keep it for a long period of time."

Bautista, he believes, will keep it going for a long spell.

"I love watching these kind of players," Martinez says. "You can pick guys out on each club who really represent the game of baseball [such as Bautista and Longoria]. Representing the way the game is supposed to be played."