How Luis Guillorme went from defensive whiz to ‘regular irregular’

Long before he emerged this season as a utility-man extraordinaire, and even before he astounded his teammates with his famous bat-catch in spring training of 2017, Luis Guillorme had acquired a distinctive nickname within the Mets’ organization.

“Everyone started calling him ‘Los Manos,’ former Mets manager Terry Collins recalled. “It translates to ‘The Hands,’ and it was perfect for him. Even as a young minor leaguer he stood out because of his great hands. I can’t remember seeing anybody with better hands, put it that way.”

That observation covers a lot of players over the years yet seems perfectly reasonable, as slick as Guillorme is defensively, catching everything he gets to and making lightning-fast transfers of the ball, whether to start a double play, make the pivot at second base, or especially while contorting his body to make underhand flips to first on slow rollers.

How good are his hands? In the dugout before Wednesday’s game at Citi Field, Buck Showalter delighted in relating an anecdote to that effect.

“In spring training, after he handled a tough hop one day,” the manager recalled, “I caught up with him when he came off the field and I asked, ‘do you wear a (protective) cup?’

“He held up his hands and smiled and said, ‘This is my cup.’"

Call that the ultimate trust, if you will. And while such ability is mostly a God-given gift, it may also be partly due to Guillorme’s upbringing in Venezuela, where he was born and lived until age 12, when his family moved to Florida to be in a safer environment.

“We lived in a decent area but going outside wasn’t a good idea,” Guillorme recalled. “I can count on both of my hands the times I was outside when we lived in Venezuela. It just wasn’t safe.

“So I had a room where we lived with just four walls and a couch. I’d throw a rubber ball as fast as I could to the wall and try to catch it coming off the wall. Sometimes I’d throw it so I had to dive into the couch and make a catch. I’d do that all day. That was literally my day.

“Then I’d be upstairs in my bedroom at night and I’d do the same thing. I’d bounce the ball and dive into my bed catching it. Sometimes the neighbors would complain and say it was too loud, especially at 10:00 at night. But that’s what I did.”

Guillorme said that when he moved to Coral Springs, Fla, and began playing Little League, he realized he had a talent that stood out compared to other kids his age.

“By the time I was 12 I knew what type of player I was, special on the defensive side,” he recalled. “When I got to high school, by my junior or senior year I believed I was going to play in the big leagues.’’

He tried to emulate the style of Venezuelan Omar Vizquel, legendary himself for his great hands, yet Guillorme was never considered a top prospect by scouts, mostly because he lacked foot speed and didn’t hit for power. The Mets selected him in the 10^th round of the 2013 MLB Draft, hoping his elite hand-eye coordination would carry the day as he progressed.

“He had tremendous bat-to-ball skills,” Mets’ scouting director Tommy Tanous recalled. “He was impossible to strike out. And defensively you just marveled at what he could do with his hands.”

As a pro Guillorme’s defense continued to stand out, but his lack of power was glaring to the Mets at a time when the organizational philosophy under GM Sandy Alderson was geared toward high on-base percentage and home runs.

So while Guillorme advanced quickly through the minors, reaching Triple-A by 2018, he couldn’t break through and stick at the big league level.

“They wanted him to start to pull the ball more and produce power,” Collins recalled. “I never agreed with that because that’s not who Luis is. He’s a guy who can hit the ball from foul line to foul line, work the count, and get on base.

“But I knew he’d eventually make a mark at the big league level. His defense alone was going to be able to help a team. I mean, you talk about those hands. He could do things you didn’t see anybody else do. Like catch a bat in mid-air.”

Ah, yes, the famous bat-catch. In 2017, when almost nobody had heard of Guillorme, he became a YouTube sensation. He was standing at the rail of the Mets’ dugout during a spring training game when Miami Marlins hitter Adeiny Hechavarria accidentally let go of the bat on a swing and sent it sailing in his direction.

While teammates scrambled to get out of the way, Guillorme nonchalantly reached up and plucked the bat out of mid-air, then casually flipped it back toward Hechavarria.

Watch it now on YouTube and the incredulous reaction by Keith Hernandez and Ron Darling, who were calling the game on SNY with Gary Cohen, says it all.

“You gotta be kidding me,” said Darling.

“I’ve never seen that,” added Hernandez. “Who is that?”

Collins, meanwhile, recalls that as amazing as the bat-catch was, “We all kind of said, ‘why not?’ He catches everything else.”

In the video, Brandon Nimmo was among the most noticeable of players who went diving for cover, and he laughed when I asked him what he recalled about the moment.

“It cracks me up every time I see it,” he said. “I knew he was a defensive whiz but I was still like, ‘dang, did he just catch that bat?’ That’s G, though. He’s a master of defense with those hands.

“You should see him play ping pong. Nobody in here can beat him. Anything to do with hand-eye coordination, he’s unbelievable at.”

Guillorme, meanwhile, said he’s reminded constantly of the bat-catch.

“It gets re-posted every year and I hear about it,” he said. “I was really just trying to stop the bat from hitting anybody. I saw it all the way.”

At that point he shrugged as if to say, no big deal. But for everyone around the Mets it was evidence that with those hands he’d play in the big leagues eventually. It just took a while, as Guillorme had starts and stops in the big leagues as a call-up from the minors beginning in 2018 but never received anything resembling regular playing time until this season.

“I’ve gotten more of a chance to prove what I can do,” he said. “In the past I don’t think I got the best chance. I always knew I could hit.”

Not that Guillorme is a true regular now, at age 27. But he’s got a manager who values the little things he offers, whether it’s his ability to simply put the ball in play or the certainty of his defense.

To that point Showalter calls him a “regular irregular” and finds a spot for him, either at second base or third, often enough that Guillorme has played in 43 of the Mets’ 64 games, and he’s producing with the bat as well as the glove, hitting .316 with a career-high .792 OPS.

He’s made such an impact that Showalter has begun campaigning for him to make the All-Star team, saying there should be a spot for a utility player.

“Nobody’s been better than him in that role this year,” Showalter said. “Watching from afar before I was here, I always wondered why somebody wasn’t beating down the door to get him from the Mets and give him a chance to play. When I got the job I was looking forward to finding out if I was missing something with him. Turns out I wasn’t. He can play.

“He has those great hands but he’s also great at making the transfer of the ball. You see the double play he made (Tuesday night) with [Francisco] Lindor? That’s just beautiful to watch. Great defenders like Luis have great imagination. You can’t teach that.”

It’s that way with most special talents. Los Manos indeed.