This story was excerpted from Mandy Bell’s Guardians Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox

It all stemmed from José Ramírez, laughing with assistant hitting coach Victor Rodriguez about Amed Rosario’s head.

I don’t even know why they were laughing. Maybe Rosario had a cut on his head from shaving. Whatever it was, Ramírez called Rodriguez over to his locker, grabbed Rosario’s head to turn it so that their coach could see it and erupted in a big belly laugh. It prompted Rosario to pull out his self-facing camera on his phone and use it as a mirror to see what was so funny.

That’s when it was clear that Ramírez was going to have another big game.

There’s been a trend that the writers have noticed over the last few years. I remember standing in the clubhouse in Los Angeles last year, watching Ramírez run from teammate to teammate, randomly mocking them. He'd spontaneously burst into rapid jumping-jack sessions, prompting his teammates to snicker. I leaned over to the other writer who was on the trip with me and said, “Every time he acts like this, he has a big game.”

That night, he hit two home runs.

No, he doesn’t always need to take part in some hijinks before a game to play at his superstar level. But there are days when it’s clear he may have a little extra in the tank. Thursday was one of those days.

A group of reporters stood in the middle of the clubhouse on Thursday, watching Ramírez and Rodriguez joke with Rosario. I looked away for a matter of seconds, and when I turned back to Ramírez’s locker that sits right beside the entryway, he was already gone. I looked behind me and he was bursting the door open to the coaches’ room, yelling and joking with anyone who was inside. It was then that I thought back to the day in Los Angeles last year and thought, “Every time he acts like this, he has a big game.”

Sure enough, he had one of the biggest in his career.

Ramírez turned in his first three-homer performance on Thursday night. It was his 21st career multi-homer game and the seventh in which he homered from each side of the plate.

On Friday, I decided to ask his teammate Triston McKenzie if he noticed the same trend on days when Ramírez finds a way to take his game to the next level.

“I wouldn’t necessarily say there’s anything I see in the clubhouse that’s like super, super different,” McKenzie said. “Obviously, I think he has a little more energy. He may want to play Mario Kart a little bit more.”

Maybe this theory is simply a theory. Maybe it’s all been coincidental. But what’s proven is that Ramírez is the heartbeat of this team. He’s the life of the room. When he’s able to have extra bursts of energy, it can only benefit him and his teammates -- more so than he does on a regular basis. And each player in the room knows how much of an impact their leader makes.

“He may not communicate as well as other guys,” McKenzie said, “but, like, he’s a huge team guy, and I think, like, on those days that he has extra energy, it’s spread out to everybody and I think the energy in the clubhouse, the energy in the dugout kind of translates to how he’s out there playing the game.

“He’s already a high-energy guy, but for him to know that the team’s playing well and the team’s, like, in a good mind state, you don’t have guys that are kind of sulking at their locker where he’s out there trying to almost play the game by himself. I think he feels a lot more comfortable to go out there and do what he’s normally supposed to do.”

So, what do you call a player who’s able to do what Ramírez does?

McKenzie sat back in his chair and smiled: “A perennial superstar.”