The Thread with a Looming Expiry Date: Luis Arraez Aims for .400

i can't be bothered to look at the historical stats, and i've touched on this before, but there seems to be an unprecedentedly low number of active players with a career BA of .300 and above. right now, there are three. Trout, who seems likely to dip down below (he's at .301), Freeman is also at .301, and Altuve is .307 -- Arraez doesn't qualify per Baseball Reference yet, but he's presently at .326 and seems likely to be well above the mark when he reaches 3000 PA (two more seasons would do it.)

I might try to check this tonight (if there's a way), but I'm guessing that coming out of the PED era--at the end of the 2004 season, say--there were 15-20 hitters with 3,000 PA and a .300+ career average.

How's that for a guess? At least 19 players finished the 2004 season with 3,000+ PA and a career .300 average.

Todd Helton - .339
Vlad Guerrero - .325
Nomar Garciaparra - .322
Manny Ramirez - .316
Derek Jeter - .315
Mike Piazza - . 315
Edgar Martinez - .312
Frank Thomas - .308
Magglio Ordonez - .307
Ivan Rodriguez - .306
Mike Sweeney - .305
Chipper Jones - .304
Moises Alou - .300
Sean Casey - .304
Shannon Stewart - .303
Bernie Williams - .301
Roberto Alomar - .300
Barry Bonds - .300
Julio Franco - .300

Also, from the 2001 rookie class:

Ichiro Suzuki - .340
Albert Pujols - .333

Because of how I did this--a rough list from the all-time leaders, dropping down to .295, then checking their career average after the 2004 season myself--there's a decent chance someone was missed. It'd have to be a player who finished 2004 at .300+, then finished his career at .294 or lower. Which seems plausible.

I actually had spotted magglio's BR page earlier and saw that his final career ba was .309! that 2007 season where he hit .363 really helped him out.

ah man my old little league baseball coach shannon stewart, shoutout to shannon

i can't be bothered to look at the historical stats, and i've touched on this before, but there seems to be an unprecedentedly low number of active players with a career BA of .300 and above. right now, there are three.

And yet... advanced evaluative metrics say current players are as good as ever. Hang-ups on Boomer/pre-Boomer box score stats when even little leaguers are familiar with and coached launch angle (yet probably not hard-hit%s and barrel%s lol). While BA may have some old school charm, it's not going to get you in the lineup as fast as LA/HH/Bar or even gen-x stats like OPS. There may be a very good reason why we'll see less and less BA grinders in the future.

Nothing against Arraez of course, his impressive BA was a product of several factors of his skillset and I'd imagine not something he was focused on.

teams just value walking + power over contact and have for a while now. the incentives for any player who can access lift + power at the expense of contact are pretty clear

All true, it's just more of an interesting change than anything worthy of alarmism

Masataka Yoshida is a pure contact guy, even with a huge slump (completely gassed towards end of the season, not unusual for JP players especially as he did WBC as well) he finished with .289. His last two months tanked his numbers but I would consider him a safe bet after finishing the season and going through the grind once.

That list I compiled obviously has some all-time greats, but there also a handful of players who, in the context of their era, weren't all that valuable offensively: Sweeney, Casey, and Stewart are the three that come to mind. They had moderate power, took 50 or 60 walks a year. With guys routinely hitting 50 HR or .350+, or slugging .700+, their .300 averages weren't a big deal. I checked their OPS+ through 2004: Sweeney's was 122, Casey's 114, Stewart's 111. .300 then didn't mean what .300 now does.

In 1930, the NL hit .303 as a league!

The point I'm trying to make, I guess, is that I think Luis Arraez, right now, has more in common with peak Nomar than with Mike Sweeney or Shannon Stewart.

Arreaz OPS+ (2022-2023): 131
Nomar OPS+ (1997-2003): 135

It's just a case of, does he get even better, or have we already seen his peak?

Dante Bichette came frighteningly close to being a .300 career hitter*, along with a bunch of big power** years and loads of RBIs*** obv

luis arraez feels to me like nu-bill madlock, which is hardly a dis, he was very close to being in the hall of very good.

Interesting...I tend to group Madlock/Buckner/Al Oliver together; they were like the second-tier high-average hitters in the '70s, after Carew. Arraez isn't Rod Carew, so that be a reasonable comparison.

"might be"

Peak Madlock (1974-83): .316, 129 OPS+
Peak Buckner (1972-82): .300, 106 OPS+
Peak Oliver (1972-83): .322, 127 OPS+

I've just shown Bill Buckner the door...the other two, very good comps.

Last one. Fewer walks, more HR, briefer peak, and more children scattered here and there, but also not bad (and a tough hitting environment):

Peak Garvey (1973-80): .311, 129 OPS+

the Yoshida example is instructive. If he worked on improving launch angle and lifting the ball, his average would probably go down but he also wouldn't hit into so many got-danged double plays

According to his coaches in Japan when he starts hitting grounders more then it means he’s tired. He’s supposedly working on stamina this year for the long season.

btw he’s hit over 20 home runs several times in Japan, really think it’s being gassed to blame

https://www.baseball-reference.com/register/player.fcgi?id=yoshid002mas

Going to the Pad's apparently!

The return, per source: Dillon Head, Woo Suk-Goo, Jakob Marsee, Nathan Martorella. On it: @CraigMish https://t.co/VnxhAkLdyT

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) May 4, 2024

does this make the marlins the first to (understandably) throw in the towel on the season?

I think the A’s threw in the towel before the season started

Since the start of the season? Sure. Kinda wild to go from making the post-season to giving up at the start of May the following year

Can't seem to google an answer, but my guess is he could be the first guy ever to win batting titles with three different teams--lots of time.

Probably even be difficult to find someone with a .320+ lifetime average about to play for his third team before he's 30.

.320 is a pretty high bar tbf

Only thing similar i can think of is that Soto could lead the league in BB for three different teams if he keeps it up this year. And he’s only 25!

Same basic point for both guys: even in the FA era, when you're that good, a third team this early in your career is (I think) relatively rare, or at least for non-pitchers.

“The guy is probably the closest to Tony Gwynn that there is right now, so I’m looking forward to seeing him in the lineup. Only seven batting titles away [from passing Tony Gwynn],” Tatis said with a laugh. “That why I said the closest.”

3-3 with a double!

Answer to question I posed above: no, no one's ever won batting titles with three different teams.

https://www.mlb.com/news/luis-arraez-can-win-batting-title-with-third-team-in-2024

Didn't realize Bill Madlock won four batting titles--most by anyone not in the HOF. I'm trying to remember if he was thought of as a good-bet HOF'er back in '83, after he won his fourth. Where he stood going into his age-33 season: 1,557 hits, .317/.378/.459, OPS+ of 130, 34.3 WAR, one World Series title ('79 Pirates), MVP votes in seven seasons, and the four batting titles. I don't think he was...I know one place to check when I get home.

i remember Madlock as a kid because he was the first example i saw of a guy who was simply a professional *hitter*, in the respect that he didn't have much else to his game beyond that. i don't recall him being a guy anyone talked about as a legend beyond his batting titles, and i think once Boggs and Gwynn came up with their more well-rounded game and won numerous titles between them, he was kind of forgotten. i suppose maybe he's kind of a little bit Michael Young, a little bit Mark Grace, a really excellent player that no one seriously considered an all-timer but an of-his-timer.

I was interested because batting titles were a bigger thing in the '70s and into the '80s, but you're right, Boggs and Gwynn (and later Ichiro) brought much better overall games (although, as I said on another thread, Madlock was a much better hitter than the superficially similar Bill Buckner). I wanted to check what James had to say while Madlock was still active, and he wasn't much of a fan--had him ranked 48th among third baseman in the revised Historical Abstract. "I never saw any other player who was as focused on batting championships as Bill Madlock." (Rose?) Wasn't meant as a compliment.

To be honest, I liked him better on the mariners

*marlins damnit lol

.419 as a Padre, up to .341 for the season (16 hits in last 6 games).

Can't remember where I read this - here? - that Arraez has one of the slowest bat speeds in the majors

Yeah but his swing is also one of the shortest

https://www.mlb.com/news/luis-arraez-bat-tracking-breakdown

xp

Posnanski's whole column the other day was about this...The most beautiful compact swing I've ever seen was Paul Moitor's.

He still doesn't score many runs--31 in 226 PA this year--and he'll never be a great player as measured by WAR: doesn't walk enough, so-so fielder (it looks like), doesn't steal much, only 43 XBH/162 games. I just think he's a fun throwback and seemingly a wizard in terms of bat control. It's like he's somewhere between Bill Madlock and Tony Gwynn.

Or like Willians Astudillo, but good.