My favorite part of my job is when players ask me questions. It’s difficult enough to come up with questions on a daily basis, so it’s great to get a free piece — and it’s even better when the question came from someone who plays the game every day. Once you make it to the Show, it’s all about staying in the Show, and that means making the most of your athletic talents. Strategy is often the key component to these questions.

When Athletics infielder Jed Lowrie came bounding across the Oakland clubhouse to me with his question earlier this year, he’d already decided to act on what he had perceived as an issue with his new/old home park. In the spring, he’d connected with his hitting coach, Darren Bush, in order to work on going the other way since he was leaving Houston’s friendly confines for Oakland’s cold. Because fly balls die in Oakland, and opposite-field fly balls are, by nature, less damaging than their pull counterparts, part of that new “oppo” approach was a heavier ground-ball profile. Mission accomplished.

But the reason behind Oakland’s fickle fly-ball play was still on his mind. “I think it’s Mount Davis,” he said back then. His theory was that the wall-like 10,000-seat expansion in center field — constructed in 1996 and nicknamed Mt. Davis in scorn after the Raiders’ late owner Al Davis — was responsible for suppressing fly ball distance in the Coliseum.

Answering his question turned out to be fairly difficult.

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On Monday, I published a post about Addison Reed, and his Andrew Miller-like transformation with the New York Mets. Within that post, I talked about the Mets’ abundant, high-leverage usage of Reed, and to support that claim, I drew from some numbers hosted on Baseball-Reference — a combination of multi-inning relief outings (meaning three outs or more) and average leverage index upon entering the game — and found that only three relievers with more multi-inning outings also had a higher average leverage index.

And honestly, I’d never really thought to combine those two figures before. Each is capturing, at the upper limits, a very different type of pitcher. At the top of the multi-inning outing leaderboard, one finds a group of swingmen, long relievers, and mop-up pitchers. At the top of the leverage index leaderboard, one finds the game’s most elite closers and set-up men. Very little overlap exists between the two.

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A few weeks ago, I approached Tampa Bay (and former San Francisco) infielder Matt Duffy in the visiting clubhouse at Fenway Park. I wanted to talk to him about the mental side of the game. He was getting dressed, so we agreed to meet in the dugout in five minutes. At that very moment, Brian Kenny began talking about the idea of clutch on MLB Network, which was showing on the TV a few steps from where were standing.

Duffy kept his eyes and ears on the MLB Network discussion as he pulled on his uniform and cleats. With that in mind, I began our subsequent conversation with that very subject. From there, we segued into his mindset as a hitter, which is heavily influenced by Harvey Dorfman’s The Mental Keys of Hitting.

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Duffy on clutch hitting and heart rate: “I think there is something to [the idea of clutch]. When you look at the RBI leaders every year — the guys who do well with runners in scoring position — for the most part it’s the same guys. To me, that’s not an accident. I think a lot of people think RBIs are purely a result of the opportunities you have. That does play into it, but I also think that, in certain situations, if I can keep my heart rate at a more efficient level than the pitcher does, more times than not I’ll succeed. I don’t want my heart rate to be so low to where I’m not awake, but I also don’t want it to be so high that I’m jumping at everything in the box.

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We’ve all seen those swings so terrible that a batter can’t help but smile. Swings like this one from Brandon Phillips last year.

Phillips, of course, isn’t the only victim of this sort of thing. He’s been a league-average major-league hitter for a decade, which is a substantial accomplishment. But even accomplished hitters can look bad, can get it very wrong.

Were Phillips batting not for a last-place club but one contending for the postseason, we might gnash our teeth. Couldn’t he see that was a slider? What was he thinking? What was he looking at?

The answer to that last question, turns out, is way more complicated than it seems. Phillips clearly should have laid off a breaking ball that failed to reach the plate. He clearly has done that — otherwise, he wouldn’t have had a major-league career. So what happened? What did he see? Or not see? Ask hitters and experts that question, and the answers are vague, conflicting, and sometimes just strange.

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Near the end of the game between the Blue Jays and Rays yesterday, the camera panned to center field. Evan Longoria was at the plate, and the Jays broadcast team was talking about the third baseman’s power. “He’s got some power to right field, too, now, and I think that’s why you’ll see the outfielders, especially the center fielder and right fielder playing a couple steps back,” said Dan Shulman. “Look at how deep Kevin Pillar is in center field. That’s only a couple of steps, it seems like, for Pillar, from the warning track!” he continued. “We have not seen Kevin Pillar play that deep,” concurred Buck Martinez.

It was impressive. That little dot in center is Pillar. Looks like a wallflower at a middle-school dance.

He was 361 feet from the plate at that moment. It makes sense, given Longoria’s spray chart this year. You’ll notice that Pillar is shaded a little bit to right, which is where Longoria hits many of his deep outs.

Source: FanGraphs

But the Blue Jays were pushing the envelope a bit. Call it situational defense, maybe, because Pillar was playing more than 30 feet further back than the average center fielder against Longoria this year. Given that there were two outs in the eighth inning of a tie game and Brad Miller and Nick Franklin were scheduled to hit behind Evan Longoria, there’s a certain amount of making sure to stop the big hit doesn’t sink the team. In a league where it probably pays to play deep, this was playing just a bit deeper on a guy who hits them deep.

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Eight hitters with enough plate appearances to qualify in 2016 have recorded an isolated-power figure (ISO) between .255 and .264. These eleven players populate the leaderboard from #20 up to #13, which for the most part is populated by a proverbial who’s who of power hitters. Daniel Murphy might surprise you, but the other seven are very much the players you would expect to see.

You might not have expected to find that Evan Longoria has found his power again or that Yoenis Cespedes is following up on his 2015 breakout, but this is a list of power hitters. Now, of course, it’s clear I’m setting a trap. That’s how this works. I’m going to show you a bit of data that looks right and then I’m going to show you adjacent data that is supposed to be shocking. That bit of data concerns the player with the 12th-highest ISO in 2016, who’s delivered more extra bases per at-bat than Cespedes, Cruz, Davis, et al. That player is Rays shortstop Brad Miller.

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Kevin Kiermaier missed a good chunk of the season after breaking his glove hand in late May, and that’s a shame, because when Kiermaier is in the field, he’s among the most exciting players in baseball. Kiermaier is must-see television with a glove in his hand. Decidedly less so at the plate. He’s been roughly a league-average hitter through 1,100 career plate appearances, and so it’s understandable that when we’re paying attention to Kiermaier, it’s usually for his defense.

But I want to flip the script for a minute. The Rays are bad, and Kiermaier missed time, and we’re usually paying attention to the defense, so this may have been easy to miss, but Kiermaier’s undergone some rather radical changes at the plate, relative to last season. Cutting to the chase:

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Brandon Guyer is currently baseball’s Hit-by-Pitch King. You could take that to mean this year, as Guyer leads all batters with 23 hit by pitches this season. Or you could take it to mean lately, as Guyer leads all batters over the last two years with 47 hit by pitches, and his 58 over the last three leaves him just one behind Anthony Rizzo’s league-leading total, despite Guyer having half the plate appearances over that stretch. Or, you could even take it to mean all-time, because if you set a career plate appearance minimum of 500 and search the entire history of modern baseball dating back to 1921, no one’s been hit more frequently than our recently anointed Hit-by-Pitch King.

HBP%, 1921-present, min. 500 PA

1. Brandon Guyer, 5.9%
2. Derek Dietrich, 4.7%
3. F.P. Santangelo, 4.0%
4. Ron Hunt, 3.9%
5. Carlos Quentin, 3.9%

The gap is remarkable. Throughout the entire history of modern baseball, at this particular skill, Brandon Guyer is truly a one-of-a-kind. And make no mistakes, it is a skill. Maybe “skill” isn’t the word you’d immediately think to use, but another way to think about a skill is the ability to repeatedly do something others can’t as a means to gain an advantage over the opponent. Most often, we see that manifested in a batter consistently getting hits, or stealing bases, or drawing walks. Oh, Guyer can hit, too, but where he really gains his edge is the being hit.

Eno Sarris wrote about this a bit when the Indians acquired Guyer at the deadline for low-level prospects Nathan Lukes and Jhonleider Salinas. The reason the Indians went out and got Guyer is because he can play all three outfield positions with what appears to be above-average ability, and mostly because he’s been one of baseball’s very best bats against left-handed pitching since he began receiving regular playing time in 2014. As Eno put it, Guyer improves the Indians’ ability to both hit lefties, and be hit by lefties. But plenty of batters have been able to hit lefties. Nobody in the history of the sport’s been hit like Guyer, so that’s where our focus turns.

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Two years ago, Steve Pearce was a revelation for the Orioles, hitting 21 home runs and recording a 161 wRC+ in just under 400 plate appearances. Last year, Pearce failed not only to duplicate that season, but even to maintain a league-average line, producing a .289 on-base percentage and 91 wRC+ whille playing first, outfield, and a little second base. As a result, the 33-year-old was left unsigned by the Orioles and had to settle for a one-year deal for under $5 million with the Tampa Bay Rays. Just a few months later, Pearce has returned to the Orioles, who traded young catcher Jonah Heim to bring him back.

From 2007 to 2013, Steve Pearce recorded at least 15 games played per season, but never received a chance at extended playing time, failing to accumulate 200 plate appearances in any one year. In 847 total plate appearances during that time, Pearce hit 17 homers, posting a 9% walk rate and 20% strikeout rate with a disappointing .283/.318/.377 line — good for an 87 wRC+ and 0.4 WAR. The Orioles were one of three teams for which Pearce played in 2013, and the team saw enough to bring him back for 2014, setting the table for his big season.

After that disappointing 2015 campaign, Pearce struggled to find a market for his services. The FanGraphs crowd estimated a two-year, $12 million contract, while Dave Cameron guessed a one-year, $8 million contract and labeled him one of the offseason’s biggest bargains before the signings began. Cameron justified his choice, thusly:

But for a team looking for a right-handed hitter who can play first base or the outfield, signing Pearce at a bench player price and giving him a shot at a regular job might be a risk worth taking. The underlying skills suggest that he’s better than a lot of other guys who have picked up the everyday player label, and unlike a lot of sluggers, he’s not just a one trick pony. He makes contact at league average rates, draws enough walks to be a decent on-base guy, is an above average runner on the bases, and defensive metrics have graded him out as an asset at first base and average in the outfield. When you combine those skills with a guy that has hit 36 homers in his last 682 plate appearances, that’s a player who is worth putting in the line-up most days.

The Rays took that minor chance on Pearce and were rewarded for it. This season, Pearce has played first and second base for Tampa Bay and appeared in 60 games so far. In his 232 plate appearances, he’s hit 10 homers, with a 147 wRC+ and a .309/.388/.520 line. While his .342 BABIP is likely to regress, his projections are still very positive. ZiPS forecasts Pearce for a rest-of-season 119 wRC+, while Steamer is a bit more pessimistic at 111. In either case, though, both numbers are solidly above average. Where Pearce can really help the Orioles is against left-handed pitchers, as the Orioles have recorded just an 85 wRC+ against southpaws, among the very worst in the game.

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Tampa Bay has aggressively scouted the lowest levels of the minor leagues in Florida and Arizona looking to get in early on burgeoning young talent. In the Brandon Guyer deal, the Rays acquired soon-to-be 21-year-old RHP Jhonleider Salinas, who is of that ilk. Salinas has been up to 95 for me in the AZL, sitting 93-94 with inconsistent feel for a changeup in the 85-87 mph range as well as an upper-70s slider. Both have flashed average. Though his delivery is oddly paced, Salinas has a loose, quick arm which make his pitches projectable, though it’s unlikely he ever has a starter’s command. He has more upside than the typical return for a platoon outfielder.

The other piece in the deal is 2015 seventh-rounder Nathan Lukes, who’s had a successful statistical season, hitting .301/.375/.453 in the Midwest League before a promotion to Hi-A Lynchburg. Lukes is more about bat control than he is bat speed and I’m skeptical about his ability to keep hitting as he moves to the upper levels of the minors, though he’s an above-average runner and plays a decent center field and he might be an up-and-down fifth outfielder just based on that. He projects as an org player for me.

In the deal that sent Steve Pearce to Baltimore, the Rays acquired switch-hitting C Jonah Heim. He’s more comfortable hitting right-handed and has average power from that side already — and might grow into some more — but the carrying tool here is the defense. Heim is mobile for his size and blocks balls in the dirt well. He also has an above-average arm. If Heim can find that sweet spot of physical development that allow him to make more of an offensive impact than he’s currently capable while retaining the quickness that makes him a good defensive catcher, then he might be a regular. It’s more likely he ends up as a back-up or platoon type of catcher.