The focus is on Luis Arraez’s chase for .400. His value to Marlins goes beyond the hits

Jon Berti is still trying to figure out how Luis Arraez did it. It’s June 19, about a half hour after the game had ended and maybe an hour and a half since Arraez’s latest feat took place in the seventh inning of the Miami Marlins’ series opener against the Toronto Blue Jays.

The bases were loaded, putting Miami in prime position to tack on more runs in a game that was already well on its way to being an 11-0 rout. Toronto pitcher Micah White throws a fastball 3.74 feet above the ground — well above the strike zone. With a quick flick of his wrists, Arraez lines the extremely elevated pitch into left field for an opposite-field two-run single, scoring Joey Wendle from third base and Berti from second base.

“The ball was at his neck and he still hit a line drive,” said Berti, still in disbelief as he tries to explain what he saw. “If I swung at that pitch, there’s no chance I even make contact. Special player.”

That hit was Arraez’s fifth of the night. For many players, that’s a career night. For Arraez, it was merely another Monday.

“He makes hitting look way too easy,” Berti said.

And it is for exactly that reason Arraez is chasing an accomplishment baseball hasn’t seen in more than 80 years in an era of baseball where the accomplishment almost never seemed to have a chance of happening.

Entering Friday’s series opener against the Philadelphia Phillies, Miami’s final series before the All-Star Break, Arraez is hitting an MLB-leading .388. He is 51 points ahead of his closest competitor in the Atlanta Braves’ Ronald Acuna Jr. (.337) and 139 points above the MLB average of .249.

And while he’s slightly below the mark right now, the elusive .400 batting average —something not seen at the end of an MLB season since Ted Williams in 1941 — is still in sight for the Marlins’ second baseman more than halfway through the season.

“Baseball is hard,” said Arraez, who along with Jorge Soler will represent the Marlins at the All-Star Game on Tuesday in Seattle. “Hitting .400 is hard — even hitting .300 is hard — but it’s not impossible. I just go out there and want to get a hit every at-bat.”

That number isn’t the end-all, be-all for Arraez. His ultimate goal is helping the Marlins make the postseason, a goal that is within reach as well with Miami having the fifth-best record in baseball.

He doesn’t focus on his individual results. Instead, his energy is devoted to the process that gets him there and what those results do in the grand scheme of the team results.

Why is that?

Because Luis Arraez’s success isn’t about Luis Arraez. At least, not entirely.

Yes, he takes credit for working hard and reaping the benefits that come with that.

But Arraez also knows he’s nothing without his supporting cast.

There’s his wife Gladys and daughters Emma and Esther (with baby girl No. 3 on the way) who he called “the most beautiful things in my life.” There’s his personal hitting coach Frank Valdez, with whom Arraez started working two years ago. There’s MLB veteran Nelson Cruz, whom Arraez overlapped with in Minnesota from 2019-2021 and views as a mentor.

And then there are his current teammates, the Marlins’ coaching staff, the fans, anyone and everyone who gives him a purpose on the baseball field.

“They are for me,” Arraez said. “They support me. They’re here every day. They are my family. This is for my family.”

He doesn’t let success get to his head. Nor does he let failure (the few times it has surfaced) impact his psyche.

Every day, Arraez remains unequivocally himself.

He’s the one laughing, joking, singing from the moment he enters the clubhouse until it’s time to head out to the field.

He’s highlighting his teammates’ success, deflecting individual praise in the process.

He’s slapping first base coach Jon Jay on the chest every time he gets a base hit and carrying the cooler to dunk water over a teammate after a walk-off.

He’s a prankster, a supporter, a friend.

“Everything he does is infectious,” Marlins manager Skip Schumaker said. “His process is infectious. The way he gameplans is infectious. His personality inside that clubhouse is always upbeat. I mean, I’d be happy too if I was 5 for 5 every day, but even the days that he’s not feeling great — which is almost never — he’s still the same guy and is super positive all the time. It’s across the board. We’re very lucky to have him.”

It’s easy to see, then, why teammates gravitate toward him.

Center fielder Jazz Chisholm Jr., whose upbeat persona is one of the few that rivals Arraez’s in the Marlins’ clubhouse, considers himself and Arraez long-lost twin brothers.

“His energy is almost unmatched,” Chisholm said. “He’s out there, he brings the energy every day. He comes in the same way. It doesn’t matter if he gets four hits or not. He’s going to give you all his energy and he’s going to pay all his attention on just trying to win. He’s a great guy to bring in. He’s the perfect fit.”

It’s an underrated layer of why the Marlins acquired Arraez in an offseason trade with the Minnesota Twins. Yes, his bat was coveted — he was the reigning American League batting champion after all — but Marlins general manager Kim Ng hoped he, like other offseason additions in Jean Segura and Yuli Gurriel, would have a positive impact on the team beyond what happens on the field. It’s hard to really know just how much a person’s personality will play in a new environment when the trade is happening, but it has worked with Arraez.

“I think watching the other guys’ reactions to him has been almost as fun as watching Luis himself and that says something considering the talent that this player is,” Ng said. “It shows what he really brings to the team is more than what he’s doing at the plate. It’s also what he does in the field. It’s the running hard, it’s the defense, and it’s the passion with which he plays the game. I love watching him after he gets a hit and he pounds Jon Jay. It’s just how excited he is to be able to contribute.”

‘He knows himself’

That said, Arraez’s prowess with his bat has him contending for a spot in baseball history.

And that brings up the question: How does a baseball player find himself on the verge of hitting .400? It takes a particular set of skills.

It starts with the ability to make contact, elite bat-to-ball skills. It continues with game-planning, knowing how pitchers are going to attack you.

Above all else, it’s understanding your strengths and weaknesses, finding consistency in each day and parlaying that consistency into each at-bat.

“The key thing,” National Baseball Hall of Famer Rod Carew said, “is he knows himself. He knows what he’s trying to do.”

Carew was there from the start of Arraez’s big-league career, serving as a special assistant in the Twins’ front office. The seven-time batting champion and career .328 hitter over his 19-year career took a liking to Arraez early on. He saw Arraez’s desire to use the whole field and understanding that, for him to make it in the game, he was going to have to make it with base hits, not home runs even in a day and age where power and slugging are prioritized at the expense of a lower batting average and higher strikeout rates.

“It was nice to see a young kid that wanted to learn and was disciplined to learn,” Carew said. “With everything I said, he would ask me questions about why or how and things like that. I just told him reasons why. I told him you’re a good hitter and if you want to improve and continue to improve, you’ve got to do these things.”

Among those things Carew told Arraez to do:

▪ Track the ball all the way out of the pitcher’s hand. That way he’s not guessing about what pitch is coming and has a better chance of reacting correctly with his swing.

“The ball will dictate to you where you’re supposed to hit it,” Carew said.

▪ Prioritize ground balls and line drives. Arraez occasionally will be able to hit a mistake for a home run, but most of the time, anything elevated too much will generally be an out.

“There aren’t any base hits in the air with flyballs,” Carew said.

▪ Use the whole field. You’re harder for opponents to defend if you can hit balls from foul line to foul line, dotting everything in between.

“That will keep you on track and keep you on the ball,” Carew said. “You’ll have success that way.”

And Arraez has had success. Just look at his track record before this season.

He hit .334 over 92 games as a rookie for the Twins in 2019, .321 in 32 games during the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, dipped down to .294 in 121 games in the 2021 season and then won the American League batting title with a .316 batting average in 2022, a season in which he set career-highs for doubles (31), home runs (eight), RBI (49) and runs scored (88).

“He does something with the barrel of the bat that very few people can do in the game,” said Pirates manager Derek Shelton, who was the Twins’ bench coach in 2019 when Arraez made his MLB debut. “That’s why he has the batting average he has. The thing that’s most impressive is, you guys see him. He doesn’t run great. It’s not like it’s a ton of infield hits. He’s truly getting hits, and the way he’s able to control the bat, it almost looks like at times he’s placing the ball in the outfield where he wants it to be.”

‘Did you see that?’

Watch Luis Arraez when he is in the batter’s box, and prepare to go back in time.

His smooth left-handed swing. His ability to use the whole field. His knack to examine a defense and know exactly where he needs to place a ball for it to be a hit … and then execute it perfectly.

It brings back memories of Carew, of Tony Gwynn, of Ichiro Suzuki.

“The first time we were watching him taking batting practice, it was like ‘Did you see that?’” Ng said. “It’s just very disciplined in the way he goes about it.”

Exactly what the Marlins were hoping to get from Arraez when they acquired him from the Twins in exchange for right-handed pitcher Pablo Lopez and a pair of prospects.

The Marlins this offseason prioritized improving a lineup that was among baseball’s worst in 2022. Trading for Arraez gave them a table-setter, a trusted contact hitter at the top of the order.

The production they have actually gotten from Arraez as they head into the All-Star Break? Beyond expected but definitely welcomed.

“I don’t think what he’s doing is talked about enough because the home run is what everybody wants to talk about,” Schumaker said. “Average has always mattered to me. I felt like, if you come to the ballpark and you look up, you want to see a 3 in front of your name. You feel good about that. I know OPS is definitely a thing and that’s taken over. And I totally understand the reasons why. But you can’t just have all slug. And the hit tool, I’m not sure there’s a better hit tool in the league than what Luis is doing.”

Want evidence supporting that? Consider the following:

▪ Arraez has struck out just 18 times over 353 plate appearances — a 5.1-percent strikeout rate. The MLB average this season is 22.1 percent.

▪ Of 610 pitches Arraez has swung at, he has failed to make contact just 44 times — a 7.2-percent whiff rate. The MLB average swing-and-miss rate this season? 24.8 percent.

▪ Arraez had three five-hit games in a span of 17 days in June, making him one of four players since 1900 to have three five-hit games in a calendar month (also Dave Winfield in June 1984, Ty Cobb in July 1922 and George Sisler in August 1921).

▪ He has nearly three times as many multi-hit games (35) and exactly as many three-hit games (12) as starts without a hit (12).

“Every time we’re watching him take at-bats and we’re sitting there watching him play, we don’t know how he does it,” outfielder Bryan De La Cruz said.

Added first baseman/designated hitter Garrett Cooper: “You’re dealing with one of the best hitters in baseball. He’s so meticulous with the way he works in the cage and on the field. This is something special.”

And Arraez does it without the traditional slugging and power aspects of the game that most of the game’s current top hitters possess. Arraez ranks in the bottom five percentile among qualified hitters in hard-hit rate (the percentage of balls in play with an exit velocity above 95 mph) and barrel percentage (which focuses on a combination of launch angle and exit velocity).

His eye and ability to figure out what pitches to hit — and get them to go exactly where he wants them to go — are his separating factor.

“If you see him ever after a pitch and he kind of jumps a little bit,” Carew said, “that’s because he’s tracking the ball all the way and he knows what that pitch did and that he didn’t have to swing at it. He’s just a smart kid. And I’ve chewed him out a few times, and I get that little smirk from him, but he’s a good kid. He wants to keep improving. And I’m glad he’s doing well.”

So… how do you game plan against a player like Arraez, one with seemingly few (if any) real weaknesses?

If an answer arises, opposing pitchers would surely like to know.

Do you try pumping him with fastballs? They’re the pitches he’s the least successful against. He’s only hitting .370 against the heater.

What about breaking balls? He has the worst swing-and-miss rate against them — at a mere 9.8 percent. The problem? He’s hitting .421 collectively there.

And offspeed pitches? Yeah. You guessed it. He’s doing well there, too, hitting .400 and whiffing just 3.5 percent of the time.

“It’s unconscious,” Marlins pitcher Bryan Hoeing said. “You can’t make this stuff up. I was telling one of my buddies he’s doing stuff in the big leagues that people would do in little league. Batting .400? You don’t see that here.”

Maybe you get him to chase. Arraez, after all, has been swinging out of the zone a lot more this season (a career-high 31.3 percent of the time). Except… he’s hitting those pitches, too.

▪ Up and in: .308 batting average

▪ Down and in: .500 batting average

▪ Up and away: .333 batting average

▪ Down and away: A minuscule (by Arraez’s standards) .296.

And he’ll hit the ball in any given direction, too. There’s a reason he was given the nickname “La Regadera” (Spanish for “The Sprinkler”).

“You just kind of hope that you get the weak contact,” Marlins catcher Jacob Stallings said. “It’s not so much attacking for swing and miss. It’s attacking for weak contact, and to be honest with you, I don’t know how you do that with him. It’s incredibly interesting.”

‘I’m playing really good baseball’

Back in spring training, Arraez said his goal was to “give energy to my teammates ... have fun with the guys and win a lot of games.”

As the first half of the season wraps up, does Arraez feel like he has exceeded even his own expectations?

“I’d say yes,” Arraez said, “because I’m playing really good baseball. I do really good things here and I work hard. Everybody knows that.”

And that means finding ways to keep improving.

Marlins hitting coach Brant Brown marvels at how Arraez has “a unique ability to make contact, a unique ability in how he sees the ball and then obviously the unique ability to work inside the ball.”

What’s the next step for Arraez from Brown’s perspective?

“My biggest thing with him is that just because you can hit everything doesn’t mean you’ve got to swing at everything,” Brown said. “Teams know that. He has a high quality of contact, but they’re gonna throw him places where he doesn’t do as well. For me, I want him to swing at pitches that he hits well instead of swinging at pitches that they’re trying to get him to hit.”

Eyes will be on Arraez for the next three months. He’ll spend the second half of the season chasing something that hasn’t been done in 80 years.

“I will root for the kid,” Shelton said. “I think it’s great for the game. I don’t know how long he’s gonna be able to sustain it, but if he sustains it into August and September, that’s awesome. That’ll be fun to watch.”

If he gets it, great. If not, Arraez will still have fun and still be celebrating if the Marlins as a whole get their greater goal.

“I don’t think this is ever about Luis,” Ng said. “I think this is all about how he’s contributing to the team. Those are the things that I see out of him. You always hope personalities like that are contagious and I think in this case for sure it is. That’s him. And as effusive as he is, I think that tells you something about our club. They are inspired by just watching him. … The guys just marvel at what he does.”