If you’ve been on social media, you’ve probably seen that Luis Arráez is having a pretty good season. Entering Friday’s game with the Chicago White Sox, Arráez is leading MLB with a .403 batting average and a .452 on-base percentage while notching a career-high .947 OPS. After winning the batting title last year, Arráez is becoming a full-blown superstar for the Miami Marlins, but things aren’t going so well for his former team.
The Minnesota Twins are in first place in the American League Central, but they have a 31-32 record. They’ve scored seven runs in the past six games, lost their past four games and lead the major leagues with 641 strikeouts. Trading a .400 hitter that happened to be one of the most popular players on a team isn’t the best PR move. But Arráez’s success is a distraction from a bigger problem that has caused the Twins to fall short of their expectations.
Let’s start with how Arráez is doing in Miami. On a nightly basis, Arráez has lit up social media with his current batting average or his infectious personality that made him so popular in Minnesota. A lot of things that Arráez was doing with the Twins have carried over, but he’s been turned them all the way up to 11.
Arráez’s strength isn’t getting the barrel of the bat on the ball. Rather it was getting just enough of it to “hit it where they ain’t.”
According to Statcast, Arráez ranks in the third percentile of all hitters by barreling 1.9 percent of his pitches faced. Over his five-plus seasons in the majors, Arráez has barreled just 2.9 percent of his pitches. However, he’s posted his highest full-season percentage with a 3.6 percent barrel rate last year.
Looking at the rest of Arráez’s numbers, not much has changed. His average exit velocity (87.9) ranks in the 30th percentile after ranking in the 48th percentile a year ago. His hard-hit percentile is in the third percentile after ranking in the seventh percentile a year ago.
With Alex Kirilloff taking over at first base and Jorge Polanco and Carlos Correa entrenched in the middle infield spots, it’s hard to see where Arráez would have fit into Minnesota’s lineup. That’s especially true with Byron Buxton serving as the designated hitter.
It’s also fair to wonder how long Arráez can hit at a record-breaking level. He will always be in the hunt for batting titles, but he also has a history of knee problems dating back to 2020 and 2021. It became such an issue that Arraez used a new workout routine using Nelson Cruz‘s advice to strengthen his lower body before the 2022 season.
“From Day 1, I knew he was going to be special, he was going to stay in the league for a while,” Cruz said in Dan Hayes’ 2022 feature on The Athletic. “He was an amazing hitter even before. At the end of the day, it’s about health and how much he can stay playing without going to the injured list. That’s the key and one of the things we addressed. We had to make sure he’s healthy.”
Even with the hard work, Arráez battled through injuries over the final weeks of the season. Despite holding off Aaron Judge for the American League batting title and making his first All-Star appearance, Arráez was a positionless player whose injury history was a legitimate concern.
None of this is meant to discount what Arráez is doing in Miami. His .335 expected batting average is the highest in the major leagues. But it also shows why the Twins were willing to trade him.
Still, Target Field has become the “Land of 10,000 Mistakes” under the current Twins regime. Brent Rooker is suddenly Barry Bonds in Oakland. Yennier Cano is unhittable in Baltimore. Spencer Steer and Christian Encarnacion-Strand are primed to become fixtures in Cincinnati. All used to play for the Twins and all found another level when they left the organization.
When Twins fans see “.403” next to Arráez’s name, it’s only natural to become upset. But his value isn’t the same as what Pablo López has given the Twins last season.
Flashback to a year ago when the Twins were struggling to field a starting rotation. While Joe Ryan was emerging as a top-of-the-rotation starter, Chris Paddack, Kenta Maeda and Sonny Gray were all nursing injuries. Bailey Ober hurt his groin while acting as a replacement. By the end of the season, Chi Chi González and Aaron Sanchez were making starts as Minnesota tried to cling to first place.
While the Twins were struggling, fans were screaming for the team to add a starter at the deadline. The situation became desperate and the Twins wound up overpaying for Tyler Mahle – a starter who had shoulder issues a few weeks before the trade deadline. When the season ended, the Twins wanted to make sure they had the pitching depth to make sure that didn’t happen again. That’s why acquiring López made sense.
However, López is having one of the worst statistical seasons of his career. His 4.25 ERA is the second-highest of his career since he posted a 5.09 ERA in 2019. His 3.80 FIP is his highest since he posted a 4.28 FIP in 2019. And his 1.3 home runs per nine innings is also the highest rate of his career.
But the numbers Twins fans should be concerned about are his 13 starts and 78.1 innings pitched. López’s presence has helped Twins starters go from 27th in innings pitched last year to first in innings pitched this season. Minnesota’s starters also rank fourth in total ERA after finishing 20th last season.
This improvement doesn’t happen if the Twins don’t make this trade. Mahle is out for the season after opting for Tommy John surgery, and Maeda suffered a setback during his return from Tommy John surgery. Therefore, there’s an alternate universe where the Twins have Arráez on his way to winning a batting title but are trotting out Randy Dobnak and Jordan Balazovic before overpaying for another starter at the trade deadline.
López has also shown some improvement with the Twins. His strikeout rate is at a career-high 28.6 percent and his .219 expected batting average allowed is his lowest in a full season. If anything, López should get better as he gains familiarity with the American League. He will also be doing so at a reasonable price point after signing a four-year, $73.5 million in April.
Even if you think the Twins should have waited before handing López the bag, consider the recent group of free agents. There was Jacob deGrom, who got $185 million from the Texas Rangers before needing Tommy John surgery. And Carlos Rodón is still waiting to throw his first pitch with the New York Yankees after signing a $162 million contract last offseason.
Put all of this together and the Twins aren’t getting hosed on this deal. But there’s still a problem. While the lineup misses Arráez for his ability to get hits and not strikeout, is also hasn’t performed at the same level they did when Arráez was in Minnesota.
Correa is off to the worst start of his career. Buxton is posting his lowest expected slugging percentage (.401) since 2018 (.233). Joey Gallo leads the majors with a 37.6 strikeout rate AND a 40.4 percent whiff rate. Trevor Larnach is hitting .130 against breaking balls and Max Kepler’s actual vs. expected production has become baseball’s version of gaslighting.
With the exception of Kirilloff and Royce Lewis, all Twins hitters are producing below their expectations, which puts the microscope on the player who used to play for them but is hotter than the South Beach sun. The heat goes up when this is happening with Minnesota’s best starting rotation in over a decade.
Again, it makes sense that Twins fans would be upset over trading Arráez, but it wouldn’t have saved them from their biggest issue. If the Twins can’t find a way to perform to their expectations at the plate, this team isn’t going to go anywhere – even if they had someone hitting .403.
