i tried recently to find a good comp for gose's rare combo of power/speed mixed with a very high K percentage and was really stumped. just aren't many guys who have combined those kinds of skills together but this ariticle explains a lot about why gose's numbers were just so funky in '11.

http://www.sportsnet.ca/baseball/2011/12/14/gose_feature/

i knew the jays had completely revamped his swing and told him to start driving the balls to the gaps, but didn't know they had forbid him from bunting (which he'll be allowed to do in '12) and this nugget was an even bigger surprise:

But the biggest knock against Gose in 2011 has been his performance when behind in the count. Many scouts saw a young kid with plenty of tools who got himself out far too often.

A 62:154 walk-to-strikeout ratio with New Hampshire in 2011 reinforced that belief. At times it looked like Gose didn’t have a two-strike approach. And that’s because he didn’t.

The Blue Jays were so committed to getting Gose as much experience as possible with his new swing that they asked him to try and drive the ball in all situations, even when down in the count 0-2, when most would be simply trying to make contact with a defensive swing.

Gose was trying to muscle the ball to the gaps.

"We said let’s just let this guy fully integrate this new swing, these new mechanics, and we’ll see what the results are," LaCava said. "We haven’t concerned ourselves with a two-strike approach yet. That will come later."

Later will be 2012 when Gose gets to put a short, contact swing back into his repertoire. He can adjust his approach depending on the situation and put the ball in play more often where his legs can do damage. The Blue Jays believe that will cut down on his strikeouts.

"His numbers probably would be significantly better if he was bunting as often as he could be for a base hit," LaCava said. "But we didn’t want to short the process of developing his new swing."