NEW YORK — “It’s fucked up, isn’t it?” Jay Bruce asked on Monday afternoon, his rising voice revealing equal parts confusion, frustration and amusement, with trace amounts of wonder. He wore a T-shirt emblazoned on the back with a swinging batter and a curved line depicting the angle of a ball’s flight, all displayed above the slogan #elevateandcelebrate. In front was his team’s familiar logo, colors and nickname, albeit with a twist. It read “Seattle Marinerds.”



To this point, Bruce’s season has been a study in extremes, one that can only be properly contextualized with the tools preferred by baseball nerds. So all he could do was shake his head and chuckle at an improbable fact: Despite a .183 batting average, his 113 OPS+ ranks him as an above-average major-league hitter. This reality has left Bruce in a strange predicament: fuming about an average that looks like it belongs to a pitcher while understanding that...