I spotted this typically hilarious and explicit post about Jose Bautista on Drunk Jays Fans yesterday and figured I’d chime in, not because there’s any obvious New York connection or because there’s much to be said that hasn’t already been said about Bautista’s amazing surge or for any good reason at all besides that I want to. Site’s called TedQuarters.

Last weekend, I was flipping between games on MLB.tv with some friends and we kept coming back to the Blue Jays-White Sox game just to see if Bautista was batting. It’s like that now: Bautista’s plate appearances are events.

This hitter, just some guy as recently as 2009, has a 1.276 OPS. He’s getting on base more than half the time. It’s Ted Williams stuff.

And so, because Bautista was just some guy as recently as 2009 and is now doing Ted Williams stuff, obviously — obviously — people speculate something’s awry. Things like this don’t normally just happen, so he must be taking some sort of performance enhancer.

Now look: Even though Bautista is subject to a battery of drug tests like all Major Leaguers these days, it’s certainly possible he’s taking some not-yet-detectable performance-enhancer, just like it’s possible that every other Major Leaguer is taking some not-yet-detectable performance-enhancer.

But let’s think about this for a second. If there’s some undetectable subtance that could turn the almost perfectly league-average 2009 Jose Bautista into the thus-far historically awesome 2011 Jose Bautista, why has no other player enjoyed a similar spike in performance? Wouldn’t lots of baseball players want to take that?

Putting aside the facts that in that time span Bautista’s swing has noticeably changed and his body hasn’t, why would anyone assume that only Jose Bautista has access to this wonder drug? Did he discover it himself? And in that case, do we even know if it’s illegal and/or bad for you?

Rhetorical questions!

I feel stupid writing about this because I’m sick of hearing bluster about steroids in baseball and I realize that taking any stance only serves to perpetuate the talk. Plus Bautista’s a grown-ass man who can speak for himself and it’s not really on me to defend his honor; I’m just here to enjoy his awesome hitting. But it’s funny to me that so many of the media types who do seem to get upset over performance-enhancing drug use in sports would rather point fingers and idly speculate than actually do the work to investigate what it is that players are currently doing to cheat.

I guess what’s most annoying about dismissing or trying to partly explain Bautista’s sudden emergence as the product of chemistry is that it represents a woeful oversimplification of the type of magnificently perplexing baseball happenstance that makes the sport so damn awesome.

99.9999% of the time (or something, I haven’t checked the math), the 28-year-old fourth outfielder with the 91 career OPS+ will never emerge as the game’s most dominant hitter. That in and of itself is pretty awesome. But then on extremely rare occasion he does, and that’s ridiculously awesome.