I don’t know how much I will miss Luis Guillorme in practice. His production declined precipitously last season and his defense wasn’t the revelation it once was. Yet Luis’s definitive departure from the only team we have ever known him as a part of — the former Met has signed with the Braves, making him, in my pal Joe’s parlance, a “dirty traitor” — has awakened a wistfulness inside me that has laid dormant throughout this offseason.
I’m not happy to know a Met I cheered for has a joined a team I root against. Still, I’m happy to discover I still care enough to experience any emotion about any Met coming or going. Players have come since the close of 2023, none of whom I am excited to step right up and greet, let alone meet, as Mets. Perhaps it’s because they all seem to have been selected in the middle and latter rounds of a low-rent fantasy draft. Not much hype to believe, regardless of how many dancers are cast within the Queens Crew. Players have gone in the same period, and I’ve held my tongue issuing warnings about what the door might do to do their posterior on their way out. Bidding adieu to bit contributors to an 87-loss team tends to keep eyes from turning dewy. Nothing personal against any of those who newly fit the descriptions of Impending Met or Former Met. Nothing personal at all. This person has felt next to nothing for this team’s transactions in whatever direction they’ve headed.
That beard!
Then Luis Guillorme goes and spoils it all by saying something stupid like, “I want to be an Atlanta Brave.” You take a lifetime Met, which being around since 2018 will qualify a person as in 2024, and you place him in any other uniform, it will tug at your Metstrings a little. He opts for the uniform with the tomahawk on the chest, and for the park with the chop in the stands, and for the team that’s finished ahead of ours every year since Luis Guillorme has been a major leaguer, it will burn. But stepping back and considering his Mets tenure pre-filthy treachery will also spark your hot stove sentimental pilot light.
The Mets can replace Luis Guillorme’s function. They already have with several versions of Luis Guillorme. Joey Wendle seems to be a Luis Guillorme type. Zack Short seems to be a Luis Guillorme type. Maybe Jose Iglesias. How about Diego Castillo? It’s not as if utility infielders don’t roam the earth brandishing versatile gloves on one hand and invitations to camp in the other.
But if Luis Guillorme was that easy to replace as a presence, why didn’t Danny Mendick stick on the bench or in our hearts? How is that Jonathan Araúz has joined Shohei Ohtani, Yoshibu Yamamoto and who knows how many other international superstars on the Dodgers? Why didn’t New York love Bill Pecota? There are fringe players and then there are players who weave themselves into the fabric of our franchise for a spell despite playing maybe three innings maybe three times a week if nobody else is injured. It’s the difference between swooning over characters we call Hot Rod or Super Joe and being oblivious to the unconditional release of Deven Marrero or Yolmer Sanchez.
Luis Guillorme calmly caught a flying bat of the wooden variety in the dugout in Spring Training a year prior to his official debut, making him a meme before he’d ever played as a Met.
Luis Guillorme worked a 22-pitch walk in another Spring Training. It didn’t count unless you saw it. And then you counted to 22.
Luis Guillorme sported a beard that was so fulsome that it shamed James Harden into demanding a trade out of Brooklyn, knowing these five boroughs were only big enough for one of their hirsute visages.
Luis Guillorme sported a visage James Harden could only look up to.
Luis Guillorme was accompanied to the plate at Citi Field by the strains of Stories’ 1973 hit “Brother Louie,” which was both somewhat on the nose and practically perfect. Nothing bad, it was good.
Luis Guillorme pitched three times total, more than any Met position player ever and as much if not more than quite a few 2023 Met pitchers.
Luis Guillorme responded to Buck Showalter’s inquiry regarding whether he wore a cup by holding up his hands and declaring, “This is my cup.”
Luis Guillorme carried the nickname “Los Manos” in honor of those skilled hands.
Luis Guillorme was, when the Mets were at their best during his tenure, the archetype of what his manager believed merited a larger and warmer spotlight. “There should be a category in the All-Star Game, for lack of a better expression, for a utility player,” Buck Showalter said during the first half of 2022. “You can’t win without one. There should be a column for those guys. They should get recognized. Kind of like Guillorme. They’re very valuable.”
Those hands!
Luis Guillorme was indeed very valuable for the 2022 Mets when they were flying their highest, filling in a whole bunch at second and third and never making Buck regret the choice defensively or beat himself up over it offensively.
Those hands could grab anything and get rid of it ASAP. That bat had its moments. The steadiness was reassuring. The mien was captivating. Luis may have peaked as a Met in 2022, which is bad news once the calendar flips to other years, but one of the benefits of long-term fandom is affinity for guys who stick around. For six seasons, options to Triple-A notwithstanding, Guillorme was a Met a Mets fan got used to and occasionally rewarded by. You let those guys go and sometimes it ends up not mattering. Sometimes they become Justin Turner. That probably won’t happen with Luis Guillorme, but who saw it coming with Justin Turner?
At least Justin Turner didn’t go to the Braves.
I had a blast talking writing, music and lots of Mets with Ed Rising on Ed’s Pop-O-matic Podcast. You can check out the show here.
I’m not mad at Luis, just disappointed. There was a time when I felt like he always made good things happen. But he did get hurt a lot, and last season he became basically a non-entity.
Then Luis Guillorme goes and spoils it all by saying something stupid like, “I want to be an Atlanta Brave.”
Heh. Stuff like this is why I come here every day. A little smile on a cold January day. Thanks Greg.
P.S. Los Manos > Manos, The Hands Of Fate
Doubt he’ll make that team out of Spring Training, but good luck to him.
Love that first card up top, in the old 1974 style. Aside from the 1973 cards, that year was my favorite Topps design.
Those utility guys were signed by the Mets? I thought you were reciting the roster of the Savannah Bananas.
He was good until he wasn’t good and now he’s gone. We’ve all heard that song before. Still, the versatile utility infielder is a definite archetype of the baseball world, and for a few years Luis Guillorme was the archetype’s prototype. I wish him the best – unless he’s playing against the Mets, of course.
Then Luis Guillorme goes and spoils it all by saying something stupid like, “I want to be an Atlanta Brave.”
—-No. Not stupid at all. Luigi boarded this absurd train in 2013 at the age of 18 and suffered eight years of the venality of the Wilpons and their accomplice and abettor, Alderson.
He watched them screw David Wright into the ground and procure and play Jay Bruce over Brandon Nimmo, just two of dozens upon dozens of similar offenses of this type.
Then, when he would have hoped Steve Cohen would turn things around beginning that great day in October 2020, it was just more circus, more nonsense, more absurdity. Instead of Dodgers East, the richest owner in the game couldn’t find competent employees able to keep it in their pants or drive the whole way home from a party, so he hired who would have him and decided to play GM himself with the motto, “how hard can it be,” butchering the organization so completely that the Mets are taking two years off in the hopes that a pack of kids barely out of high school can turn things around.
Guillorme once had a bad game in the field and entire ‘fan’ sites howled for his head. That he would want to go somewhere sane, finally, is a sin? Bless his heart. I hope he has a couple of good years left and makes it to a World Series or two before the Mets are ready to rejoin the fray.
Condemn him for this? Not a chance.