Is it weird to anyone else that a perennial .300 hitter who's been a central piece on two different teams keeps getting traded?
I mean, I sort of get why Luis Arraez is getting out of Miami, he's the only person hitting well there. But...arguably he shouldn't have even been dealt to Miami in the first place. It says a lot when one of the guys who was supposed to replace Arraez in Minnesota played alongside of him for a month here. The Twins have only just figured out that middle infield, and Edouard Julien is not the multi-tool player Arraez is. But they wanted Pablo Lopez, and have made him even more legitimate. I still am not sure whether it was worth Arraez, but the Twins are doing better than the Marlins.
But I dunno, I mean the way Arraez has been playing, he doesn't seem like the kind of player to be dealt twice in 16 months. Which is to say I don't think the Marlins should have given up that easily. But, I mean, he was the only one playing well, maybe he asked to be traded, maybe the Marlins have just committed to selling and pulling apart everything they put together last year. But it just baffles me.
Or maybe the Marlins' sudden fall puzzles me. Everything that was working about this team last fall is just completely blistering and dying, and it's gotta be disheartening if you liked that team last year. And now the .300-hitting centerpiece is heading to San Diego.
The one bit about this trade that does worry me is that Arraez has been having difficulty with his defensive numbers this year, and the Padres already have a ton of subpar defensive players. Jurickson Profar, Luis Campusano, Tyler Wade, even Xander Bogaerts are having depleted defensive years, and now here comes Arraez and his torrid 2nd base numbers. I assume the plan is to play Arraez at 1st, swing Cronenworth to an outfield role and start platooning people? They'll probably figure something out as they go, but maybe getting Arraez away from 2nd is the idea, even out his numbers? And I assume he'll still hitting .300, he seems very good at that.
I'm sad for the Marlins, but honestly this move is good for them. Now they're all kinda on the same page. Until somebody else takes off, I guess.
The idea that he could win three straight batting titles with three different teams is just so insane. (And I realize with the start he's off to it's unlikely he'll take it this year, but it's certainly possible.)
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