Guillorme: Master of getting on base, making the most of his playing time

NEW YORK — If the name of the game is getting on base, and the best hitters are the ones who get on base most frequently, then Luis Guillorme is currently the best hitter in the National League.

The Mets’ infielder, who’s been used sparingly for his entire fiveyear career, has the highest on-base percentage of any NL player that’s made at least 100 plate appearances. He’s ahead of potential Hall of Famers Paul Goldschmidt and Manny Machado, and he’s not just edging them out either. Guillorme heads into the Mets’ grueling West Coast road trip with a .455 on-base percentage. Goldschmidt is at .429 with Machado at .422.

Both Goldschmidt and Machado have made double the plate appearances that Guillorme has, but that’s not Guillorme’s fault. All a hitter can do is maximize the at-bats they’re given, which is what Guillorme did for the entire month of May. He racked up a preposterous .414/.477/.517 slash line in 66 May plate appearances. The batting average and on-base percentage led Major League Baseball during that month, and it was the tenth-highest batting average any Met has ever had in a single month. That scorched earth stretch forced himself into the lineup, as the Venezuelan has started 12 of the Mets’ last 20 games and each of the last five.

Buck Showalter has really had no choice but to play Guillorme. A career .262hittercomingintothe year, Guillorme has started the year hitting .360. The 27-year-old has always been an obsessively patient hitter, and now that the hits are starting to drop too, seemingly no pitcher in the league can keep him off the base paths.

For the third straight season, Guillorme is taking a walk in over 14% of his plate appearances.

While the rest of the players in the league swing at 47.4% of the pitches they see, Guillorme is offering at just 39.4%. He’s also seen 31 pitches this season that Baseball-savant defines as “waste pitches,” ones well outside the strike zone that are typically meant to either set up a subsequent pitch or get a hitter to swing at something they have no chance of contacting. Of those 31 pitches, Guillorme has swung at zero.