They don’t make them like Luis Arraez anymore.
In an era of exit velocity and launch angle, the Miami Marlins leadoff hitter is an old school contact hitter in the mold of Rod Carew and Ichiro Suzuki. Since he debuted in 2019 nobody has been better at getting the ball into play and avoiding strikeouts, and now he’s making a push to become the first player since Red Sox legend Ted Williams to bat .400 for a season.
Arraez came to Fenway Park this week in better position to challenge for .400 than anyone in a generation. He entered the series batting .399 and remained at that mark heading into Wednesday after going 2 for 5 in Miami’s series-opening 10-1 win.
His .399 average leads baseball by 69 points, and Arraez also leads MLB in OBP (.450) and hits (113) while ranking fourth in OPS (.945) and fifth in offensive WAR (3.5). He’s also struck out 16 times in 313 plate appearances and has a strikeout rate of 5.1%, miles ahead of the MLB average (22.9%).
To put what Arraez is doing into perspective, he’s effectively averaged a 2 for 5 performance every night through the first half. Even if he’s not cranking lots of home runs and driving the ball like most of baseball’s top hitters, Arraez’s greatness still resonates, including within the Red Sox clubhouse.
“What he’s doing is special and I think it’s good for the game,” said Red Sox outfielder Alex Verdugo. “It’s getting the game back to the way it used to be played, when batting average matters and getting on base matters and getting hits matters.”
Since Williams batted .406 in 1941, only two players have come anywhere close to approaching the mark, those being Hall of Famers George Brett in 1980 and Tony Gwynn in 1994.
Brett was batting .400 as late as Sept. 19 before falling off the pace in the final two weeks and finishing at .390. Gwynn never got the chance to make that late a push, as the season was cut short by the 1994 players strike in mid-August, at which time he was batting .394.
Batting .400 at any point in the modern era would have been a monumental feat, but Red Sox hitting coach Peter Fatse said the idea of anyone doing it today almost defies belief.
“It’s ridiculous, especially when you consider the stuff he’s doing it against,” Fatse said. “The league is really challenging, a lot of really good arms, teams know information about you and they know your weaknesses and strengths, so it’s really impressive for a guy to be able to adapt that much.”
So how is Arraez able to hit at such a prolific clip?
“His hand-to-eye is ridiculous and he knows the strike zone very well,” Fatse said. “So those are two things that set up anybody to have a lot of success in the big leagues.”
Though Arraez’s performance this season has been historic, it hasn’t been too far removed from his past track record. Since breaking into the big leagues in 2019 he has batted .328 and is the reigning American League batting champion after hitting .316 with the Minnesota Twins last season.
Arraez has also boasted baseball’s best whiff percentage in all four 162-game seasons since his debut, and he’s ranked 100th percentile each year but 2021, when he was 99th percentile.
In layman’s terms, this is just who Arraez is, a once-in-a-generation talent excelling at a style that’s seemingly fallen out of fashion.
“He’s very unique,” Red Sox manager Alex Cora said. “Yeah, he’s not hitting homers like others, his slugging percentage isn’t the same as others, but the whole season all around, he’s one of the best hitters in the big leagues.”
Left-hander Chris Sale will undergo an MRI on Thursday to assess his progress since being diagnosed with a stress reaction in his left shoulder blade.
Sale, who last pitched on June 1, is on the 60-day injured list and won’t be eligible to return until Aug. 1 at the earliest. He is with the team in Boston and the club will determine his next steps depending on the results of his tests.
Right-hander Tanner Houck, who was hit in the face with a line drive on June 16, is expected to spend the next week recovering after undergoing successful surgery on Tuesday. Cora indicated it will likely be a while before Houck returns to the mound, saying he has “a lot of steps to go” while comparing his situation to when Ryan Brasier was hit by a comebacker in a rehab start in 2021.
Brasier’s return was complicated by the concussion he sustained in that incident, and while Houck’s situation isn’t as serious, Cora said he did also suffer a concussion.
“I think it was a slight one but he’s good now,” Cora said.
Left-handed reliever Joely Rodriguez (left shoulder inflammation) will make another rehab appearance on Thursday for the Portland Sea Dogs in New Hampshire. It will be Rodriguez’s fourth outing of his current rehab stint, and in the prior three he’s allowed two runs on six hits over 2.1 innings.
Infielder Yu Chang (left hamate fracture) will restart his rehab assignment this weekend when he serves as designated hitter for either the WooSox or Sea Dogs on Saturday. Chang has been out since April 24 and has twice been pulled off rehab assignments due to soreness in his hand. His last minor league outing came on June 8.
Left-hander Richard Bleier (left shoulder inflammation) will throw live batting practice at Fenway Park on Thursday. Catcher Reese McGuire (right oblique strain) is still receiving treatment and won’t be ready to return until after he’s eligible to come off the 10-day IL next week.