Blue Jays slugger Jose Bautista swings back at Toronto Sun columnist over Twitter dig

True, Jose Bautista ould have high-roaded it and let Steve Simmons' remark go ignored, which is probably what it deserved.

On Tuesday night, just as the Kansas City Royals were celebrating their dramatic 9-8, 12-inning comeback victory over the Oakland Athletics in the American League wild-card game, Simmons pounced by alluding to the Toronto Blue Jays all-star outfielder's criticisms of the Jays' lack of moves the July trade deadline. It wasn't a criticism necessarily, but in the context of the vast swaths of the Twitterverse being fixated on an exciting baseball game, one could see how the Jays star would view it as a shot. So Bautista (well, Bautista's Twitter) pretty much gave Simmons and the Internet what it wanted by responding.

Within a hour, Bautista's riposte had been retweeted more than 1,000 times and favourited by more than 1,600 Twitter users.

This is coming just two days after the Jays wrapped up another frustrating season, finishing third in the AL East with an 83-79 record, five games out of the final wild-card spot and 13 games behind the division-winning Baltimore Orioles. And the comment isn't really enhanced by including @joeybats19, so one can see why it was so tempting to fire off a retort. Everyone's been there.

The merits of the argument barely worth humouring; it's a classic instance of facts minus context. For starters, the jumping-off point was a one-game crapshoot. If Oakland had held on to the 7-3 lead it took into the eighth inning or the 8-7 margin it took into the 12th, there's nothing to say. Furthermore, Kansas City even being a playoff team in the first place is due to having some unique qualities. As for trades, while the Royals did not make any at or just before July 31, last year it gave up top prospect Wil Myers in order to get just two seasons' work out of ace right-hander James Shields. Essentially, that is the exact move Blue Jays GM Alex Anthopoulos probably would not attempt.

Either way, getting a rise out of 'Bautista' is probably all the Toronto Sun wanted.

Update: Simmons attempted a retort, which Bautista turned on like a batting practice fastball, removing any doubt about the authorship of the first tweet.

Neate Sager is a writer for Yahoo! Canada Sports. Follow him on Twitter @neatebuzzthenet.