The interesting, and enlightening thing about Bautista is that he was still a 122 wRC+ bat in what was considered a disaster of a season for him. The elite plate discipline did not deteriorate one bit, and the power numbers were lower than his standards set since the breakout, but a .217 ISO in what was again a down year is very impressive. One important thing to note is that despite his strikeout rate having a somewhat significant spike to roughly 20%, his plate discipline numbers remained rather unaffected for the most part, except one aspect. His swinging strike rate, contact within the strike zone and overall contact rates were right around his post-breakout norms, really the only noticeable difference here was his O-Contact% which was way below his standard, down around 10 percentage points from his previous 5 year average. This could mean couple of things:
1) Pitchers exploiting a new weakness that wasn't there before?
2) Declining batspeed, perhaps forced by his shoulder issues, not allowing him to catch up to certain pitches which he was able to foul off or put into play before?
3) Over-aggressiveness at the plate? Maybe he came up to bat in one too many critical situations forcing him to take unprecedented swings on bad pitches, or alternatively, the pressure of the moment getting to him, making him anxious at the plate.
4) Some combination of the above?
Edit: 5) Just variance and general randomness?