Luis Arráez’s historic achievement an indictment of how teams value contact hitters

Luis Arráez made Major League Baseball history on Sunday. The San Diego Padres infielder won his third consecutive batting title, and did it on his third team in three seasons. After winning the American League batting title with the Minnesota Twins in 2022, Arráez led the National League in batting average in back-to-back seasons; both with the Miami Marlins in 2023 and this year with the Padres.

And while Arráez's feat did not go unnoticed, especially among the Friar faithful, the 28-year-old has not received near the recognition this type of accomplishment warrants. The sports media is more concerned about giving Shohei Ohtani his flowers for recording the first-ever 50/50 season and praising Aaron Judge for his power-packed 2024 performance.

Those two players, and so many others deserve all the accolades, but it seems as though Arráez's exploits have been lost in the shuffle. Why? Frankly, it has nothing to do with Arráez himself, but rather the current state of baseball. Top executives and front office personnel are more concerned with launch angle, exit velocity, and swing speed rather than putting the ball in play.

Padres' infielder Luis Arráez is a unicorn by today's baseball standards

Gone are the days when fans would laud the achievements of players like Wade Boggs, Rod Carew, and even Padres' legend Tony Gwynn. In this new era of analytics and advanced metrics, teams are incredibly dismissive of statistics like batting average. That stat has been tossed aside in favor of OPS, wRC+, and slugging percentage. Teams don't care that can you hit the ball, they just want to know how far it goes if you actually make contact.

Strikeouts have become accepted, and oftentimes even ignored. This year's strikeout-leader, Elly De La Cruz, has been fawned over all season and is seen as one of the rising stars in the game. Never mind the fact that he set a team-record for the most strikeouts in Cincinnati Reds history; a franchise that saw Adam Dunn lead the league in Ks on three separate occasions.

But don't look for Arráez to change his style just because is't not en vogue. While fans and experts may be enamored by the long ball, Arráez seems quite content to allow his play on the field to speak for itself. Congrats to Arráez on another successful season, and Pads fans sure hope that there's a lot more where that came from heading into the playoffs and on into 2025.

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