Luis Arraez was in a Minnesota Twins uniform less than a year ago. And with the Miami Marlins reportedly open to trading him, he could realistically find his way back to Minneapolis as quickly as he was sent away. It’s all about money.
It’s not easy to foster a successful long-term sports franchise. Even teams loaded with talent don’t always win in the playoffs over decades-long spans. The task gets even harder when those talented players pack their bags and play somewhere else. Such is the life of a small-market baseball team.
Some of those small-market teams find creative ways to succeed, whether it’s the Moneyball Oakland Athletics or the slap-hitting Kansas City Royals. But they almost always lose their big-name talent in the process.
The Marlins represent a potential talent source for Derek Falvey and Minnesota. Arraez will be a free agent in 2026, and they don’t want to pay him.
They’ve ranked between 23rd and 29th in total payroll since 2018, owner Bruce Sherman’s first year with the team. Miami has spent $70,285,221 million less than the average MLB team despite playing in a free-agent destination and the league’s 18th-largest market. For perspective, Minneapolis-St. Paul is the 15th-largest market. Sherman runs a frugal club, one that has almost no untouchable players. They’re a mock trade dreamland.
Everyone in Minnesota knows Arraez’s skill set: His career .326 batting average, minus-0.4 K-BB%, and 124 wRC+ fit in every lineup. The Twins could use him back to help balance out a strikeout-prone lineup.
Bringing him back will come at a cost. The Marlins, especially Sherman, have made it clear they want to be like their in-state rival, the Tampa Bay Rays. Sherman has gone so far as to hire former Rays GM Peter Bendix as his President of Baseball Operations.
Bendix was GM from December 2021 through the end of the 2023 season, essentially replacing former Marlins GM Kim Ng. Like former CEO Derek Jeter, Ng left the Marlins due to a disagreement with the organization’s direction. It’s the same direction the Rays have taken for years.
Bendix may not have been the one orchestrating the many infamous Rays’ trades, but he played a role and will command the same respect. No team wants to make the next Rays-like blunder.
The Rays are perhaps the best and most recent underdog team. For over a decade, they’ve swindled opposing GMs into making poor trades, like the one that brought them Tyler Glasnow, Austin Meadows, and Shane Baz from the Pittsburgh Pirates in exchange for Chris Archer.
Despite spending much of his early tenure with the Rays as a reliever before suffering injuries, Glasnow developed into a textbook north-south fastball-curveball pitcher. Before the Rays had to empty their pockets to retain him, they traded Glasnow to the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Meadows was an All-Star in his first full season with the Rays, ultimately owning a wRC+ of 123 in his full three seasons with the team. They traded him to the Detroit Tigers for Isaac Paredes after the 2021 season. Paredes’ 128 wRC+ has outperformed Meadows’ 92.
Baz is still fledgling but has displayed remarkable skills akin to Glasnow. He’s a candidate to have a similar resurgence for Tampa’s depleted rotation. Tampa only owes him $701,000 in the upcoming season. He’s a perfect example of how the Rays succeed despite a small payroll. He very well could play for a different team once he hits free agency.
Minnesota will need to exercise caution when trading for Arraez. Just because the Marlins may not have the desire to keep him around doesn’t mean the trade won’t come back to haunt them.
It may take Edouard Julien or a package of Emmanuel Rodriguez and David Festa to fetch Arraez. All three of those players could develop into stars. In Julien’s case, he could build on his terrific rookie season and become something even greater.
Arraez may not be the player the Twins trade for altogether. The Marlins are not short on enticing trade pieces, and some of them may not require Minnesota to part ways with promising prospects.
Edward Cabrera, Jesús Luzardo, and Jake Burger are all available for the Twins and the rest of the league to trade for.
We’ve discussed Cabrera before. His poor fastball control but otherwise freaky stuff makes him a high-risk, high-reward starter. He had a 137 ERA+ season in 2022 despite his four-seamer returning a strike only 50% of the time he threw it.
Perhaps Cabrera could be had in exchange for prospects like Luke Keaschall and Marco Raya.
Luzardo represents a new trade target. He throws a somewhat unique 97 mph four-seamer as a lefty. The pitch stays slightly flatter than other four-seamers from his release point, with a substantial 14.1 inches of arm-side run.
His four-seamer is good but not as dominant as his slider. Luzardo’s slider is one of the league’s best at generating whiffs, being in the 95th percentile in swinging strike rate (SwStr%). The pitch was susceptible in 2023, though it may be only a temporary blip.
Statisticians often use Batting Average on Balls In Play (BABIP) to assess how “lucky” a pitcher is. Pitchers who give up a lot of hard contact will naturally have high BABIPs, but sometimes things that are out of their control punish them. Luzardo could be such a pitcher.
The BABIP of Luzardo’s slider, 0.494, is vastly higher than its expected BABIP of 0.332. Occasionally, he throws a mistake pitch that opponents do damage on. But Luzardo looks unlucky in terms of how much damage hitters did to his slider.
Luzardo’s xBABIP isn’t particularly low, though. Its 0.332 mark was 11th percentile last season. Still, there may be even more bad luck present.
Hitters can control their swing paths, and therefore launch angles, fairly consistently. From this, ground ball and fly ball hitters are born. Line drives are a bit harder to control, though. Sure, the best hitters will hit more line drives, but that does not apply to pitchers. Pitchers, like hitters, can develop fly-ball and ground-ball tendencies. However, they can’t control line drives.
Luzardo’s 24.1% line drive rate on his slider (34th percentile) may not be incredibly different from the league average (21.6%), but it suggests he may have been unlucky.
Should Minnesota be able to acquire Luzardo, they could be getting more than just the 125 ERA+ pitcher he was last year. He could also see regression towards the mean with his slider, making him an even more reliable option.
It may take significantly more to convince the Marlins to trade him. A package of Brooks Lee, Emmanuel Rodriguez, and Matt Canterino may be needed to get it done.
Though Minnesota is not in the market for a third baseman, a player like Jake Burger could pique its interest.
The Chicago White Sox traded Burger to the Marlins at the deadline last August. He broke out in Miami, creating 131 wRC+ in 53 games. Equipped with prodigious power, Burger has struggled with strikeouts in his young career. He owns a 28.8% strikeout rate since debuting for the White Sox in 2021.
As the season progressed, Burger simply made better decisions. He continued to be aggressive, swinging at pitches that most other hitters wouldn’t have. However, he also began to make contact more often than expected (accompanying graphs below).
Burger will probably always remain a relatively high-strikeout, high-power player. But he showed growth last season.
Created by PitcherList, Decision Value assesses the value of a hitter’s decision to swing minus the value of taking the pitch. Burger made better swing decisions last season, which could mean he’ll become an even better hitter.
The Marlins may keep him, or they could entertain offers, and he could bring his new abilities to the Twins. Minnesota isn’t exactly short-handed on position players, but Burger could be an upside player worthy of being in any team’s lineup.
It’s difficult to say how much the Marlins value Burger. The Twins may have to give up Festa and/or Emmanuel Rodriguez.
The prospects mentioned in these speculative trades could develop into players far greater than what the Twins could get in return. Then again, the best-case scenario for Arraez could be multiple seasons of 130 wRC+. Although it’s almost impossible to guess if he’ll be able to develop better control, Cabrera could become a frontline starter. Luzardo is already a great pitcher but has a higher level to reach. The Marlins may identify Burger as an upside bat, and he could continue on his 130 wRC+ levels for years to come.
GMs never know how things will turn out, but they know the Marlins, like the Rays, are looking to trade away players due for big contracts down the line. The Twins may be able to capitalize.
