We know Jose Bautista at this point. It’s been a long marriage between the city and man, which began of convenience and became one of deep affection. We know his habits, his strengths, his weaknesses. We know the marriage may end soon, as some marriages do.

But right now we also know that Bautista is not hitting. In the playoffs so far: 21 at-bats, three hits, two home runs and a single, five walks, a gaudy 10 strikeouts. In his last four games, he has eight strikeouts in 14 hitless at-bats. Even in his injury-marred regular season, this would be a blip. In the post-season, with the Toronto Blue Jays trailing Cleveland 2-0 in the American League Championship Series, everything is magnified.

So: what’s wrong?

“I’m having great at-bats,” said Bautista, in an extended, relaxed chat with reporters. “It’s just sometimes the elements and the circumstances that we have to deal with as hitters sometimes doesn’t necessarily go our way. But I’m not trying to really get into that.

“All you have to do is go look at video and try to count the number of pitches they have thrown over the heart of the plate. It hasn’t been many. But they’ve been able to do that because of” — and here he paused, like he was either imparting a secret or deciding on the wording, or both — “the circumstances.”

The circumstances?

“That I’m not trying to talk about,” he said. “Because I can’t. That’s for you guys to do, but you don’t really want to talk about it either.”

Ah, yes. The 35-year-old Bautista’s battle with umpires has been a struggle for him that borders on the existential. He believes he can see the strike zone better than they can, and when they see a different version of his three-dimensional geometric perfection, it offends him. In Game 1, his sixth-inning strikeout did feature a remarkable lack of actual strikes. In his ninth inning strikeout in Game 2, strike one looked outside. In his third-inning strikeout, he swung at ball three. Bautista seems to believe that Cleveland is not pitching to him in the first place, which combined with bad umpiring screws up the whole operation.

“Yeah, I mean, for me, I’m trying to swing at strikes and not get out of the zone,” he said. “I’ve noticed how they’ve been pitching me, and it’s been tough, but I continue to have the same type of at-bat, because they’re pitching me the same. I just haven’t been able to get the pitch that I get every three at-bats that’s over the plate.”

Indeed, in Game 1 Corey Kluber walked Bautista with two outs and Edwin Encarnacion on first, perhaps because Russell Martin was up next. The pitches weren’t close. The ol’ intentional non-intentional walk.

“It feels like every at-bat that I’ve had has been like that,” Bautista said. “I mean, whether you want to challenge me or not, I’ve got to keep swinging at strikes. So if they keep wanting to pitch around me, so be it. But I’m going to go up there and keep being aggressive in the zone, and hopefully not miss the pitch that I’ve been missing. Because I’ve had two or three in the first two games that have been pretty hittable pitches, and I’m missing. I fouled them off, or something.”

He remembers two: a Josh Tomlin fastball and a Cody Allen fastball, both out over the plate when they were supposed to be inside. It happens.

So maybe it does look like Bautista is playing hero ball, swinging like he wants the ball to reach the moon every time, and the result is strikeouts. But he usually swings hard. And if he has to expand the strike zone he misses more, and he looks bad.

When he connects, though, he can be the hero. You may remember some examples, if you try. That’s how this team is built. They swing, and when they connect they often win.

“There’s different things, you try different things a time or two, but you are what you are, a lot of times, when you get to a certain point in this game,” manager John Gibbons said. “And you live and die with it, if you want to know the truth. That’s got us to this point, a few mistakes, drive a couple of balls, things could be totally different. But I don’t think you start redoing everything you are. Somebody mentioned the other day, if you’re a three-point basketball shooting team in the NBA, you still have to fire ’em up, you have to, or you’ve got no chance to win. I’m not dodging the question, but that’s the reality, whether people like that or not, that’s who we are.”

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And as centre fielder Kevin Pillar puts it, “It’s just natural to go up there and want to do something that’s going to allow you to be remembered. A lot of people’s careers have been made off one big at-bat, or one big hit in the post-season.”

Jose Bautista may not be a Blue Jay much longer. Marriages end. But he still has a chance to be the hero despite the small men he sees dragging him down, despite the deficit, despite everything. The marriage, the series, the opportunity to be remembered: none of it is over yet.

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