STEELE SPORTS

I think that I speak for all Minnesota Twins fans when I say that I was sad to see the departure of star utility player and 2022 American League batting champ Luis Arraez.

Arraez had not only become a fan favorite for his consistent hitting and ability to play nearly all positions in the field, but for the fact that he was consistently just happy to be playing the game he loves.

That being said, I can’t fault the Twins’ front office for thinking that now was the best possible time to trade away one of our star players at his highest value.

After four seasons in the MLB, Arraez has a career batting average of .314 – an elite number to say the least.

However, his numbers are somewhat inflated by his first two seasons in the league where he batted .334 and .321 during a much smaller sample size of at-bats.

Arraez earned an average of .328 across that span – which surely turned heads league-wide – but, he did so across 438 at-bats.

Arraez has earned a larger role with the team in the past two seasons and has seen the plate 975 times as a result, but his numbers have dipped from that starting average of .328 to .305.

While it may be picky to look at his stats this way and begin to make judgments on differences of 0.023, it actually proves that there was solid reasoning behind the Twins' decision to deal him.

While his play in the field may not regress, Arraez’s averages at the plate are what makes him a true commodity.

To see consistent declines in his most valuable asset would mean that his value in trade conversations would likely decrease the longer that the Twins held onto him.

Adding onto this theory of now being the proper time to trade Arraez is the fact that he set a new career-high in 2022 with eight home runs.

With the Twins becoming known as a team that supplies much of its offense through the long ball, Arraez’s power does not seem to fit the direction that upper management is trying to go.

However, the return that the Twins managed to receive for Arraez – starting pitcher Pablo Lopez – is perfectly on point for what the team needs.

Lopez has come into his role as a starter in the past two seasons for Miami and has seen consistent improvements in all major pitching statistics – even doing so in a much greater sample size of work.

Similar to Arraez’s sample sizes, Lopez’s first three seasons saw him pitch just 226.4 innings compared to his 282.2 innings pitched since 2021.

After allowing opponents to bat .247 on average through his first three seasons, Lopez has reduced said number to just .233 since 2021, all while improving his strikeout percentage from 21.2% to 25.6%.

Also adding to the allure of Lopez is the fact that his wins above replacement statistic (WAR) has improved from 2.8 to 5.8 in the same span.

While I may be sad to see Arraez go, I think that this was the exact right time for the Twins to strike and improve their rotation in a major way.