Luis Arráez

Luis Sangel Arráez

Bats Left, Throws Right
Height 5' 10", Weight 177 lb.

Debut May 18, 2019

Born April 9, 1997 in San Felipe, Yaracuy Venezuela

Biographical Information[edit]

Immediately after making his major league debut with the Minnesota Twins early in the 2019 season, infielder Luis Arraez became identified as a throwback player, a high-average hitter with limited power and an ability to make contact and avoid strikeouts. He batted .334 in 92 games that season, which would have put him second behind batting champion Tim Anderson of the Chicago White Sox had he accumulated enough plate appearances to qualify. He finished 6th in the voting for the Rookie of the Year and on a Twins team that set a major league record for most homers with 307, he only hit 4. He did not have a regular position, seeing time at second base, third base, in left field and at shortstop, and walked more often than he struck out, 36 to 29. His OBP was an excellent .399 and his OPS+ 124 in spite of his limited power. In the Division Series, he was one of his team's few productive hitters, going 5 for 11 with 4 doubles as Minnesota was swept in three games by the New York Yankees.

His sophomore season, 2020 was completely disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic and he ended up playing in just 32 games. He hit .321, but all 9 of his extra-base hits were doubles, and his walk rate went down, his OBP falling to .364, leading to an OPS+ of 114. All his games were at second base as the Twins used a more stable line-up. In the postseason, the Twins were swept again, this time in two games by the Houston Astros in the Wild Card Series, and he went hitless in 6 at-bats, although he did draw a pair of walks. In 2021, the Twins unexpectedly fell to the bottom of the standings, finishing last in a weak AL Central division, and he again went down a notch, his batting average - his best tool - falling to .294 in 121 games, with his OBP at .357. He hit 2 homers and scored 58 runs. He was back to moving around the diamond, with his principal position being 3B, as he filled in for regular Josh Donaldson, followed by second base and left field. Thanks to his continued ability to reach base, his OPS+ was still good at 106, but was the lowest of his three seasons.

In 2022, he had a bounceback year that earned him a first trip to the All-Star Game, thanks to a league-leading batting average and an OBP well over .400 at the end of June. He was named to the team as a first baseman, as this was now his main position, although he continued to make regular appearances at second base as well. On September 3rd, his 9th-inning single broke up Dylan Cease's bid to throw a no-hitter; he had recorded 26 of the needed 27 outs when Luis did what he does best, lining a single into right-center field. With a month still to play, he had already reached career highs for hits, runs scored, doubles, homers, RBIs and walks. He won the Rod Carew Award as the American League batting champion by going 1 for 1 with a pair of walks in the season's final game, against the Chicago White Sox on October 5th. He thus finished at .316, just ahead of Aaron Judge, thus depriving the New York Yankees slugger of a potential Triple Crown. The two had been neck-and-neck in the race for the last month or so. His average was the lowest by an AL batting champ since Carl Yastrzemski had won the crown while hitting .301 in 1967, the so-called "Year of the Pitcher". His OPS+ was 130 in 144 games, with 173 hits, including 31 doubles and 8 homers, and he scored 88 runs while driving in 49. He was named the winner of the Silver Slugger award as a utility player, the first time the designation was used in the two leagues.

Following his batting title, it was assumed that Arraez would be one of the building blocks on which the Twins would depend for their future, but on January 20, 2023, he was included in a surprising trade with the Miami Marlins for pitcher Pablo Lopez and two minor leaguers, infielder Jose Salas and outfielder Byron Chourio. The Marlins were desperately looking to improve an offense that was unable to provide proper run support to a strong pitching staff the year before, while the Twins now had a surplus of infielders following their unexpected re-signing of Carlos Correa, so the trade made sense from a strict baseball perspective. Arraez was the first reigning batting champion to be traded before the following season since the Twins had traded future Hall of Famer Rod Carew to the California Angels after he had won his seventh batting title in 1978. One of the first orders of business for him after joining the Marlins was to go through salary arbitration, a process that had started when he was still with the Twins. His former team had proposed a salary of $5 million while he was asking for $6.1 million; the Marlins did not change the amount proposed or manage to settle the case before a hearing. In the end, he was successful, being awarded the amount he sought on February 2nd.

Before he first played with the Marlins, he was with the Venezuelan national team for the 2023 World Baseball Classic and was one of the stars of the team that played its pool games in his future home ballpark, LoanDepot Park, belting two home runs in their quarterfinals loss to Team USA. He got off to great start with the Marlins in the 2023 season, as after 12 games, he was leading the National League in hits (22), batting average (.537), on-base percentage (.596) and OPS (1.327). In the last of these games, against the Philadelphia Phillies at Citizens Bank Park on April 11th, he became the first player in Marlins history to hit for the cycle - 4,700 games after the team's debut! He started his night's work with a 1st-inning double against Aaron Nola, tripled in the 6th, and homered off Connor Brogdon in the 7th. The triple and homer were both his first hits of this kind that year, and then he did what he does best - hit a single - to complete the feat in the 8th, lacing the ball into left field against Andrew Bellatti. The Marlins won the game, 8-4. Interestingly, every other major league franchise had had at least two players hit for the cycle while the Marlins were bereft, and there had been a total of 111 recorded since the franchise's 1993 debut. Arraez was also only the 6th player from Venezuela to accomplish the feat. He hit over .400 in April and in fact was at .421 after a hitless game on April 26th. He began a 12-game hitting streak the next day - and in spite of this saw his average drop to .408 by the end of the streak on May 9th! By going 0 for 3 on May 10th, he saw his average dip below .400 for the first time that season as it now stood at .398. He continued to hit well through May, and on June 3rd, he had another great game, going 5 for 5 with 5 RBIs, career highs in both categories, to lead the Marlins to a 12 - 1 win over the awful Oakland Athletics. The performance raised his average to .390. He was also the first Marlins player with a five-hit game since Starlin Castro in 2018, and the first to ever combine this with 5 RBIs. He was only the fifth player to hit .390 or better through his team's first 59 games since 2000, after Todd Helton (.394 in 2000), Albert Pujols (.391 in 2003), Chipper Jones (.409 in 2008) and Joe Mauer (.413 in 2009). His cycle had come on the day his wife had told him she was pregnant, and the five-hit game on the day when it was revealed the child would be a girl - his third daughter. On June 5th, he went 3 for 4 to raise his average to .399 and start drawing comparisons to the great Ted Williams - the last man to hit .400 over a full season. He moved above .400 the next day thanks to a 2-for-4 performance that raised his average to .401. After a brief foray above the .400 mark, he went into a mini-slump, with a three-game hitless streak pushing him down to .378. However, he had another five-hit game on June 16th to move back to .390, and yet another one on June 19th to get back to .400 - but that would be his last day spent over the mythical mark. Meanwhile, however, the Marlins were red hot, having gone 13-3 since June 2nd. He returned to the All-Star Game, this time as the starting second baseman for the National League. The Marlins made it into the postseason (as did his former team, the Twins, the trade having been beneficial to both) and Luis finished the year at .354 in 147 games. He won his second consecutive batting title, becoming just the third player, after Ed Delahanty and D.J. LeMahieu, to win one in both major leagues, and the first to do so in back-to-back years.

He started the 2024 by hitting .299 in the Marlins' first 33 games, below his career norms but a rare good performance on a Marlins team that was 9-25 at that point and struggling badly to score runs. On May 3rd, rumors began to emerge that with the Marlins unlikely to return to the postseason, a deal was in the making to trade Arráez to the San Diego Padres in return for four players - Woo-Suk Go, Dillon Head, Jakob Marsee and Nathan Martorella. The trade was confirmed a few hours later, in time for Arraez to make his debut with his new team on May 4th, and he did so in grand fashion, getting 4 hits including a double, scoring twice and driving in a run in a 13-1 win against the Arizona Diamondbacks. He was the first player in Padres history to debut with a four-hit game. The trade provided exactly what the Padres were looking for, namely a spark at the top of the line-up, and they went on a hot streak in the weeks that followed. On May 22nd and 23rd, he became the fifth player in team history to have back-to-back four-hit games, the last having been Jon Jay in 2016. Even the great Tony Gwynn, to which he was frequently compared, had only done so once. That also gave him a whopping 31 hits in his first 17 games for San Diego, a new franchise record. He had a tremendous streak after the All-Star Game, to which he was named for the third straight year with a third different team, when he put together a streak of well over 100 plate appearances without striking out. When it reached 120 PAs on September 10th, it was the second longest on record this century, after one of 147 PAs by Juan Pierre in 2004, and within sight of the Padres franchise record of 170 set by all-time great Tony Gwynn in 1995. The longest such streak since 1961 was 223 by Dave Cash in 1976. Luis's streak ended on September 16th when he was K'ed by Spencer Arrighetti of the Houston Astros in the 2nd inning after a nine-pitch battle; he had gone 141 plate appearances without a strikeout. He then collected hits in his next two at-bats, raising his batting average to .323, well ahead of anyone else in the National League. San Diego won the game, 3-1. He won his third straight batting title, finishing at .314 in 150 games, ahead of Shohei Ohtani who made a tremendous surge over his final ten games to finish second at .310.

Notable Achievements[edit]

3-time All-Star (2022-2024)
2-time Silver Slugger Award Winner (2022/AL-UT & 2023/NL-2B)
3-time League Batting Average Leader (2022/AL, 2023/NL & 2024/NL)
NL Hits Leader (2024)
2-time NL Singles Leader (2023 & 2024)
200 Hits Seasons: 2 (2023 & 2024)

Related Sites[edit]

Luis Arraez on mlb.com

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Luis Arráez

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