MIAMI — Any time Luis Arraez steps up to the plate, Miami Marlins fans are already on their feet expecting a hit.
More often than anyone in years, Arraez will deliver.
Traded from to Miami by the Minnesota Twins in January, the modestly built left-handed batter is putting together one of the greatest stretches of pure hitting in decades. After going 5-for-5 against the Toronto Blue Jays on Monday night, Arraez’s average reached .400 in Miami’s 73rd game of the season — matching Atlanta Braves star Chipper Jones in 2008 for the furthest into a season a player has been at .400 since Boston Red Sox slugger Nomar Garciaparra’s 91 games in 2000.
Already, Arraez is in a realm few players have touched since Ted Williams hit .406 for the Red Sox in 1941.
“I believe in myself. I trust myself. I just come here and play hard,” said Arraez, who in April became the first player to ever hit for the cycle for the Marlins, who began playing in 1993.
Arraez entered Friday leading Major League Baseball in batting average (.397), hits (106) and on-base percentage (.447). And then he raised his average to .402 by going 3-for-4 in a 3-1 loss to the Pittsburgh Pirates, who ended a 10-game losing streak.
He surely would have traded the hits for the win, but overall Arraez and the Marlins (43-34) are surging. They’re second in the National League East to the Atlanta Braves (48-27), who are the division’s five-time reigning champions. Still, Miami missed a chance to gain ground Friday, when the Braves’ eight-game winning streak ended as the NL Central-leading Cincinnati Reds won 11-10 for their 12th consecutive victory.
Miami can still count its first 75 games as the club’s best start since the 1997 season, when the Marlins won the first of their two World Series titles. The success comes a year after finishing with their 11th losing record in 12 seasons (they were 31-29 during the pandemic-shortened 2020 season) and four years after losing 105 games.
“This is my family. My team, we play like a team,” said Arraez, who spent time with the Chattanooga Lookouts in 2018, when they were in the last season of a four-year run as Minnesota’s Double-A affiliate. “We just do the little things. We play defense. We’ve got really good relievers. We’ve got really good starting (pitching). We’ve got everything. Now everybody trusts this team. And I trust this team.”
After winning the American League batting title in 2022, Arraez became the first reigning batting champion to be traded the following offseason since Rod Carew after the 1978 season. The Twins shipped Arraez to Miami for a package featuring starting pitcher Pablo López, who has looked like a potential All-Star for Minnesota.
Arraez had a breakout season for Minnesota last year, receiving his first MLB All-Star selection while batting .316 to lead the league. This year, he leads NL second basemen in All-Star balloting with 1,464,802 votes after the first phase.
In an era when power is the metric by which hitters are more and more heavily judged, the 5-foot-10, 175-pounder from Venezuela is an outlier. He doesn’t have much pop — he has two home runs this season — but he hits just about everything you could throw him. The 26-year-old is batting .396 against four-seam fastballs, .333 against sinkers, .360 against cutters, .438 against sliders and .450 against changeups.
When Williams hit .400, the leaguewide average was .261 and four other players hit .340 or better. The leaguewide average this season is .247, and Arraez is the only qualified player batting better than .330.
“He’s really unique,” Pittsburgh Pirates manager Derek Shelton said. “He does something with the barrel of the bat that very few people can do in the game, and that’s why he has the batting average he has. The thing that’s most impressive is he doesn’t run great. It’s not like he’s getting a ton of infield hits. He’s truly getting hits.”
Shelton was a bench coach with the Twins when Arraez was called up to the majors in 2019 and said he’s happy for his success.
“It’s great for the game. I don’t know for how long he’ll be able to sustain it, but if he sustains it into August or September, that’s awesome,” Shelton said. “That’ll be fun to watch.”
The Marlins, for now, sit atop the NL wild-card race with the All-Star break coming in July, and they could reach the playoffs for the first time since 2020.
Arraez, who has a club-record three five-hit games this season — all this month — has had help in powering the Marlins to their best start in years despite an uncharacteristically slow start to the season by Miami’s ace and reigning NL Cy Young Award winner Sandy Alcantara, who is 2-6 with a 5.08 ERA.
Designated hitter Jorge Soler entered Friday tied for third in MLB with 21 home runs, trailing only Shohei Ohtani (24) of the Los Angeles Angels in the AL and Pete Alonso (23) of the New York Mets in the NL. And 10 of Soler’s homers have given the Marlins a lead.
Meanwhile, 20-year-old right-hander Eury Perez has been stellar to start his MLB career after he was called up in May. His 1.54 ERA through his first eight career starts is the third-lowest for a pitcher his age or younger since 1913, when ERA became an official MLB statistic, according to Elias Sports Bureau as reported by the Marlins.
“There’s a lot of prospects that are hyped and never really pan out at the big-league level,” Miami manager Skip Schumaker said after Perez tossed six scoreless innings with nine strikeouts against Toronto. “This kid is the real deal.”