Welcome to the MLB Star Power Index -- a weekly undertaking that determines with awful authority which players are dominating the current zeitgeist of the sport. While one's presence on this list is often celebratory in nature, it can also be for purposes of lamentation or ridicule. The players listed are in no particular order, just like the phone book.

The right-living boulevardier always conditions their level of effort upon the likelihood of success. If something is unlikely to be successful, then do not grunt, wheeze, and strain yourself into a state of public flatulence over it. If tasked with something Job- and or Frodo-like in its burdens -- like, say, hanging a curtain rod in the break room -- one should instead go vape in a hammock and wait patiently for the consequences to assemble and deploy. Once those consequences show up for you, take the merest countermeasure of going to vape somewhere else.

Inevitably, this brings us to Mets moundsman Taijuan Walker. Monsieur Walker has pitched the majority of his career innings in the American League, and as a partial consequence he's batted just 82 times in his career. While his overall numbers at the plate are hardly shameful by the standards of people wandering outside their core competencies, he's a miserable hitter by any other standard. So it is to his enduring credit that he recently greeted these absurd obligations with the intensity they merit:

Excelsior to the rarely glimpsed human embodiment of "unbothered contempt"! Rare is the job that you can characterize as finished regardless of whether you succeeded at it. If told to install a new commode but instead you fire a frozen pumpkin through the front bay window, then you have failed at installing a new commode. However, when asked to simply register a plate appearance, you can do what Taijuam Walker just did -- i.e., nothing at all -- and chalk it up to figuring out what it takes to get by and then doing a little less than that. This is as worthy of adoration as any sacred artifact displayed in a golden reliquary.

Speaking of which, it is decreed that an NFT be made of the video you see above and displayed in a golden reliquary for the spiritual uplift of all those who would prefer not to have to do that -- no matter what "that" might be. In the meantime, the name of St. Taijuan shall be appended to the ledger of utmost honor inspired by this image:

Lo and also behold, it is time to add another name to the list of honorary Wild Boars in Haifa Taking a Nap after Eating All the Garbage:

Perhaps no one has earned this laurel like Taijuan Walker, who would do anything for baseball but he won't do that.

In keeping with the mandates of the collective bargaining agreement, we have heretofore reserved this honor for players who have accrued at least one (1) day of major-league service time. Tradition is useful for binding societies in routines, but there comes a time when even the most cherished of norms must be robustly puked upon.

So on this day we honor a minor leaguer called Robbie Tenerowicz. The name evokes a puckish and sun-burnt sort who once sneaked an idling t-top Trans Am into fifth period World History. The reality is something greater still. Gird yourselves for paramount effort and cold hammer forged Rock and or Roll music:

Stand by, good people, while we listen to that song again.

Hell yeah, one more time.

Righteous jam. In any event, there's swinging a baseball bat and then there's swinging the +11 unholy two-handed vorpal greatsword so as to behead the 31st level neutral evil horned ice golem with a single, arcing swoop of deep mountain dwarf steel. This is an example of the latter. Robbie Tenerowicz and his blood-spattered blond locks are either going to get the hit or the hit points and maybe both. Sometimes you can't tell the difference.

Head on a swivel, pitchers. You, too, orcs. When Boiled Thunder Robbie Tenerowicz is about with this sharpened cudgel, any roll of the 20-sided die reveals a hitter's count.

Sporting competition often involves subterfuge. This is good because it adds a layer of intrigue to the contest in question and also because it teaches impressionable children that adulthood is the not only the province of free-ranging bedtimes, self-medication, and silent dinners, but also a phenomenon shaped and made tolerable by unabating dishonesty.

This brings us to a recent bunt attempt by Padres functioning adult Trent Grisham. Please witness the greatest lie ever told:

(h/t: Hall of Misery on Twitter)

The squeeze bunt is such that the buntsman does not want to reveal his act of run-scoring baseball meekness before the moment arrives. So at the last instant he lunges from his usual stance into bunt position in an effort to catch the defense by cruelest surprise. Grisham, though, has taken deception to new heights by incorporating for the first time in baseball history -- this might not be true, but that hardly matters -- the pre-bunt leg kick. Normally, the leg kick is a timing and coiling mechanism used by the hitter intent on hitting the ball hard and also far. It is not, at least until now, found in the quiver of a hitter looking to tickle the baseline with the wee butterfly kiss known as the bunt. Thus, the ruse you witnessed above via embedded color television is a pioneering one. It's unknowable whether Grisham's unexampled act of deception was necessary, but things worked out for him.

As long as we're telling lies, things have also worked out for you.