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Welcome to the MLB Star Power Index -- a bi-weekly undertaking that determines with awful authority which players/baseball entities are dominating the current zeitgeist of the sport, at least according to the narrow perceptions of this miserable scribe. While one's presence on this list is often celebratory in nature, it can also be for purposes of lamentation or ridicule. The players/living baseball phenomena listed are in no particular order, just like the phone book. To this edition's honorees/dishonorees ...

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Kyle Schwarber
PHI • LF • #12
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Max Muncy
LAD • 3B • #13
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In this lousy space we recently praised two-way superstar Shohei Ohtani for being perhaps the last pitcher ever to undertake the gentlemanly practice of wearing a jacket on the bases. Such is the cost of the universal DH, which is otherwise a blessed thing given that it spares us from watching non-Ohtani pitchers undertake a plate appearance in the manner of a rabbit dying in a snare. 

That installment of SPI was largely a funeral dirge for the practice of wearing a jacket on the bases, but perhaps such lamentations were premature? Take it away, enterprising sum buck Jason Lukehart: 

From on high, this is so decreed. Any batsman disgracing the profession by batting under .200 – thus behaving like a pitcher at the plate – must wear a jacket on those rare occasions when he reaches base until such time that he is no longer batting below .200. Yes, this could mean he wears a jacket once during a game and then later is relieved of such burdens in that same game. The mind riots at such possibilities – in particular the jacketed array of hitters who begin Opening Day 0 for 1 at the plate but then reach base the second time up via walk or HBP or error or any means other than a hit. 

At this point, let us hold up for a blend of ridicule and gratitude those qualifying batsmen who, at this writing, are in the Tunic Zone – i.e., batting lower than .200. These numbers are updated as of the last time they were updated, which is the only time they were updated: 

  • Kyle Schwaber, Phillies: .182
  • Max Muncy Dodgers: .194

Should you reach base, ye crapsmiths, wear the jacket or face a lengthy suspension and the full weight of cultural outrage. Others who might want to keep one eye on the updated batting average trailerboards include Shea Langeliers (.202), Willy Adames (.203), and Alex Call and Byron Buxton (.207). Have a thorax-warming textile of satin nylon at the ready. All of you – plus Ohtani and the very occasionally forfeited DH spot – are our current hopes for sustaining the game's finest tradition. 

Addendum: The number of jacketed appearances on the bases is hereby admissible in salary arbitration hearings. 

Tom Hamilton, Guardians radio broadcaster

You will recall with some sense of titillation that Guardians cloutsman José Ramírez recently presented a more-than-willing Tim Anderson with a one-way ticket to Gadzooks Avenue via this ringing konk on the bonebox: 

The thing about the haymaker is that, no matter how poorly conceived and executed, sometimes it still makes hay. Hay hath been made at the demonstrable expense of Tim Anderson's jaw. We're not really here to talk about that, though. What we're here to talk about is Guardians radio broadcaster Tom Hamilton and his soaring narration of this exchange of soupbones. 

Human speech is almost always loud and stupid and diminishing to all who hear it and should be undertaken only when necessary. What follows, though, is an exception. The only instances in which human speech is welcome is when it serves to chronicle acts of barbarity into oral tradition. Those who recount bloodshed in such a species-enriching way are unto themselves a rare phenomenon known among social scientists as Violentiam Oris, or, as translated from that original Latin, "Violence Mouth." 

The Violence Mouth honorific has previously been bestowed upon just three individuals throughout the sprawl of history: Homer, Parthenius of Nicaea, and Gordon Solie. Now, though, Tom Hamilton has joined the scarce ranks because of these words, which forevermore shall remain sketched upon the infield dirt behind second base at Progressive Field or whatever they're calling it now: 

Down goes Anderson, but up go the vast remainder of us for having heard the sky-scraping words of Tom Hamilton, Violence Mouth.