In 2010, Jose Bautista burst onto the scene, by smashing 54 home runs for the Toronto Blue Jays, after hitting only 56 runs in his previous six seasons. Many considered his season a fluke and detractors tried their hardest to determine the cause of his new found power.

Perhaps Bautista simply benefited from the friendly confines of the Rogers Centre?

Nope, of his 96 home runs in the last two season, 43 have come away from the Rogers Centre. This is a normal figure, considering most players hit better in their home ballparks.

Maybe Mr. Bautista took steroids or performance enhancing drugs?

Also very unlikely, according to Bautista, he’s been tested as many as 15 times since the start of last season, with every test coming back negative.

Whatever the reason, his critics were positive that we’d see a major drop in production in 2011. They were wrong. Horribly wrong, in fact. Instead of regression, we’ve seen major improvements in nearly all facets of Bautista’s game.

First and fore most, he’s drastically improved the one area critics harped him the most on, batting average. He hit a pedestrian .260 last season, but given his .233 batting average on balls in play (BABIP), his average probably would rise in 2011.  And rise it has, all the way up to an impressive .301 mark.

Perhaps most importantly Bautista has raised his on base percentage to impressive heights. Bautista’s .378 OBP (on base percentage) last season was very respectable, but this year it’s all the way up to a major league leading .445.

Finally, it’s unlikely that he’ll be able to reach 54 home runs again, but his 42 this season lead the majors. In just two years, he’s unequivocally cemented himself as the best power hitter in the big leagues. Here are the major league home run leaders over the past two years.

Jose Bautista- 96

Albert Pujols- 78

Mark Teixeira- 70

Paul Konerko- 69

Dan Uggla- 68

Not only has Bautista joined an impressive group of power hitters, he’s transcended them.

Everything checks out for Bautista in terms of his overall numbers. He leads the majors in the following categories; HR (home runs), walks, OBP, SLG (slugging percentage), OPS (on base plus slugging), and OPS+ (on base plus slugging plus). In addition, he’s second in fWAR (fan graphs version of WAR) and first in rWAR (baseball references’s version of WAR).

However, there are two big problems here.

The first problem? Bautista’s rather poor second half.

First half: .338 BA, .468 OBP, .702 SLG, 31 HR, 100 hits, 74 walks

Second half: .249 BA, .411 OBP, .476 SLG, 11 HR, 47 hits, 57 walks

Bautista has tanked in the second half. If he had come close to approaching those first half numbers, he would have been a lock in for MVP.

Secondly, Bautista has the misfortune of playing for the Toronto Blue Jays, a club that sits currently sits fourth in the AL East. They’ve played decent baseball this year, sporting a 78-76 record, but they haven’t been able to handle the Red Sox, the Yankees, or the Rays.

This leads to the question, how do you pick Bautista over Adrian Gonzalez, Curtis Granderson, or Jacoby Ellsbury when these three players have led their teams to the playoffs this season (cross your fingers Sox fans)?

That being said, between his second half swoon, and the fact that his team sits in 4th place in their division I find it hard to believe that Jose Bautista will be the 2011 MVP.

Jackson Alexander can be reached at [email protected]