The San Diego Padres are having a decent season so far as they are 37-35 and in second place in the NL West. It will be tough to keep up with the first place Los Angeles Dodgers, but so far, the Padres have kept themselves in striking distance. One player for the Padres that is having a great year is Luis Arraez. Arraez is the second baseman for San Diego, and he is currently hitting .326 this season.
Luis Arraez recently came over to the Padres from the Miami Marlins, and he has been tearing it up so far in San Diego. He was hitting .299 this year when he came over from Miami, and he is hitting .351 since coming to the Padres.
Arraez has hit like this for his entire career. His MLB career started in 2019 with the Minnesota Twins, and he has hit under .300 in just one season. It was 2021, and he hit .294.
In the field, Arraez is also a stud. He had four errors at second with the Marlins this year, but since coming to San Diego, he has made zero in 25 games. He has been locked in.
Because of his high level of play, Arraez has been compared to baseball legends Tony Gwynn and Rod Carew. Gwynn played for the Padres back in the day, and Gwynn played for the Twins.
“One of my friends called me ‘Little Tony Gwynn,’” Luis Arraez said according to an article from The Athletic. “And then, especially the fans from Minnesota called me ‘Little Rod Carew.’ That’s amazing for me.”
Rod Carew recently discussed the similarities between him and the late Tony Gwynn. He saw a lot of things in Gwynn that he also saw in himself.
“The great thing I think that we had is the quietness about us and the way we approached hitting,” Carew said. “It wasn’t a do-or-die thing for us. I’ve told many people this: God blessed us with the ability to do something that nobody else can do. And do we give those secrets away? But, you know, that’s what it’s like. I feel that Tony was a great hitter. He could do things a lot of guys couldn’t do, and I feel the same way about myself.”
Rod Carew is starting to see those things in Luis Arraez
Rod Carew obviously talked about Luis Arraez as well, and he is noticing a lot of good things with his hitting. You have to be doing something right in order to hit .326 in the MLB.
“He’s really learned how to track the ball,” Carew said. “No one can throw a pitch by you, because you know to look at where the ball is coming from and track it all the way until you get ready to hit. It’s rare to see a guy that can do that. And he’s one of the few kids in today’s game that tries to track the ball all the way.”
Tony Gwynn's son, Tony Gwynn Jr., is now an announcer for the Padres. He sees the similarities between Arraez and Carew.
“There was a time when Juan Pierre first came up,” Gywnn Jr. said. “I remember my dad telling me, ‘They say this guy’s got my game.’ And I never saw that in Juan. As good of a player as he was … I couldn’t put those two together. But when I watch Luis, I can see the ’82-to-’91 version of my dad. And I can see the clips I’ve seen of Rod (Carew). I can see a lot of those in him.”
Working with the Padres, Gwynn Jr. has obviously spent a lot of time talking to Arraez. He enjoys those conversations.
“Talking to Luis about hitting, a lot of the same keywords come up,” Gwynn Jr. said. “‘Hit a hard ground ball to shortstop.’ ‘Hit the ball the other way.’ That’s exciting. Because you don’t hear anybody talking about it anymore. It’s so technical. You’re talking launch angle. You’re talking all the new kind of words that we have in the lexicon of hitting. It’s fun to talk to somebody who has the foundation that he has. The basics are the basics I grew up with.”
Luis Arraez is different than some of the other sluggers around the league in the sense that he doesn't hit for power. He has just one home run this season. Arraez is just focused on getting on base, and he's very good at it.
“I got power, too, but it’s not my game,” Arraez said. “My game is just getting base hits and getting on base.”
Padres manager Mike Shildt seems to think that there are some hitters like Arraez that could be missing out on opportunities because they don't have the right amount of power.
“It’s a shame how many amateur and lower-level professional hitters have been excluded from continuing to play because they don’t meet a measurable,” Mike Shildt said. “They don’t meet an exit velocity or a bat speed or a launch angle or any of those things that this game is now basically recruiting and monetizing blindly. They’re just getting hits. And somehow that became out of vogue in our industry in general.”
Luis Arraez isn't hitting a lot of home runs, but he has found a way to make it work and then some. He is one of the best hitters in Major League Baseball.
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