As if Jose Bautista hitting 54 homers this season wasn’t an amazing enough feat, now it turns out he did most of that slugging with a hernia.
Bautista underwent surgery to repair a sports hernia today and is expected to be out of commission for 4-6 weeks, leaving him plenty of time to get healthy for spring training.
Jordan Bastian of MLB.com reports that Bautista “tolerated discomfort due to the injury since May.” Seriously.
Taking a look at his numbers after, say, June 1, he smacked 38 homers and 23 doubles in 386 at-bats, which is good for a .624 slugging percentage that ranked third in all of baseball during that time behind only Josh Hamilton at .712 and Carlos Gonzalez at .641.
Amazing.