Is this a sell-high by the Twins?

Good haul for Arraez. Also, a good return for the Marlins who could really use a guy who can plausibly play 2B like Arraez and hit like him at the same time.

I'm assuming that Jazz slides over to SS now. If not, this trade doesn't make sense because Arraez isn't great as a hitter at 1B.

Why the heck are the Marlins sending prospects with Lopez? Isn't he more valuable than Arraez?

Imagine if the Marlins had a rotation of Sandy Alcantara, Luis Castillo, and Pablo Lopez!

I thought Arraez for Lopez was a fair trade, then the Marlins tossed in Salas and another young prospect so the Twins definitely win this trade.

The Marlins says Chisholm is moving to CF.

1 - yes, they did a great job here (and i like/root for arraez).
2 - amaya is a good defender and should play short after they finish service time games.
3 - i think he is.
5 - huh. ok.

Not a huge deal but it is 2 years of control for Lopez vs 3 years for Arraez. That might be 6 WAR (with more injury risk) vs 10 WAR but that's not worth a lot of prospect value. Just about the closest thing we see these days to an old-school "big" name MLer for MLer trade.

I was wondering if Arraez's already impressive BA might benefit from the shift ban. But he looks like a very straightaway hitter so I wouldn't think he faces many shifts.

I was wondering if Arraez's already impressive BA might benefit from the shift ban. But he looks like a very straightaway hitter so I wouldn't think he faces many shifts.

He should benefit less than anyone.

Pretty weird trade for the Marlins IMO. Do they really need a singles hitter who plays marginal defense?

Arraez is a singles hitter, but if .316 is his true ability (and it wasn't the product of a BABip spike that I can see), that's awfully good these days. Twenty years ago, there were .300 hitters like Edgar Renteria or Luis Castillo who were pretty mediocre offensive players. But league BA is so low these days that Arraez had an OPS+ of 130 in 2022. That was still low for a .300 hitter, but every .300 hitter was basically really good last year. Qualifiers who batted .300 or better:



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Generated 1/20/2023.

Right. Within context, he's not quite Carew and Gwynn, closer to Ichiro and Jeter. Who can play an average 2B or an above-average 1B so even more like Carew or Jeter. Carew hit 328 in a 260 league; Arraez so far has hit 314 in a 244 league. Carew walked above league average while Arraez is at league average and Carew's 100 ISO was a lot closer to league average than Arraez. But a guy with an OBP 60-70 points above league average and a league-average SLG is a good hitter. Batting average -- it's not just for old farts!

Now whether he can keep that up for another 8-9,000 PAs is a whole other question, but he can probably keep it up for three years.

Just for fun, Arraez vs Schwarber 2020-22:

LA 1203 PA, 308/367/401, 118 OPS+, 8.7 WAR, 4.7 WAA, 1.6 dWAR, 29 Rbat, 6.9 oWAR
KS 1364 PA, 230/338/503, 129 OPS+, 5.4 WAR, 1.0 WAA, -4 dWAR, 50 Rbat, 7.9 oWAR

If we're looking for a flaw with Arraez then it's that, like Schwarber, he doesn't hit LHP very well. The BA is closer to 260 and the power drops substantially. That guy is the singles hitter the Marlins don't need.

Not a huge deal but it is 2 years of control for Lopez vs 3 years for Arraez. That might be 6 WAR (with more injury risk) vs 10 WAR but that's not worth a lot of prospect value. Just about the closest thing we see these days to an old-school "big" name MLer for MLer trade.
Arraez also is cheaper in '23. But I think this overstates the likely WAR gap between the two (ZiPS, for example, was projecting Lopez for 2.4 and Arraez for 2.3 next year ... though Arraez may flip that less than the margin of error advantage moving off of first it's not enough to lead to a 4 WAR gap. Add to that that Salas is a solid prospect (BA ranked him 4th in a weak system -- by their scale he'd rank between 5th and 13th with the Twins).

Baseball Trade Values is a fun, if not at all to be taken at face value site that tries to compress all this stuff into values. They assess this (in terms of excess value) as a trade that would be rejected as too favorable to the Twins -- Lopez worth $38.8m, Salas worth $20.5m, Chourio $0.1m versus Arraez worth $26.6m. (I think this overrates Salas and underrates Arraez but, again, that the Twins won this one handily.)

I think this boils down to the 1B/DH penalty. He's much more valuable if he puts up those stats at another infield position (and doesn't stink it up on defense). He's the best player in the trade and has an extra year of control. Marlins may have overpaid a bit but they got the best player in the deal.

It may be a fWAR vs bWAR vs zWAR thing but Arraez had 4.4 bWAR last year and 3.4 in just 479 PA in 2021. Pro-rate his 2020 out to 2022's PAs and you get 4.5 WAR. That's a 4-WAR player entering ages 26-28. I regressed a bit in guesstimating 10 WAR. Lopez I didn't look as closely at but last year he had 3 bWAR but I didn't notice he missed a chunk of time in 2021 (2.8 WAR). But still it's 7.2 WAR over the last 3 years in about 2 full years of starting. Regress that a bit and 6 seems about right to me. But I have no objection to using ZiPS projections.

Now there's nothing* standing in the way of Judge winning the AL Triple Crown! The guy right in front of him in the batting race (Arraez) and the guy right behind him (Bogaerts) are both now in the National League! Bwa ha ha ha!

(*Other than the fact that Judge probably isn't really a "true" .300 hitter. I won't be surprised if his .311 last season ends up being his career high)

(*Other than the fact that Judge probably isn't really a "true" .300 hitter. I won't be surprised if his .311 last season ends up being his career high)

Taking a look at this made me think of the great scene in Bull Durham where Costner is talking about the difference between hitting .250 and .300. Beautiful scene! Anyway, it could be a career high for sure, but he wasn't too far from .300 in 2017 and 2021. Just 7 or 8 more hits and he would have been at .300. Looks like when he's healthy and playing a full season he has the ability to do it. I mean 7 or 8 hits, that's only one more dying quail every three weeks! :-)

I am a big Luis Arraez fan, but his knees are a ticking time bomb. I am not sure Luis can be counted on to play 2B. This is a great trade for the Twins IMO.

Arreaz was a life-long Twin and a joy to have in the community and my understanding is that Lopez is a similar guy, so that's a wash. Arreaz is both good and young but with injury problems, but so is Lopez so that's a wash. I think the difference comes down to years of control and roster construction which is why FL threw in the kids.

MN has a lot of guys that could realistically take a turn at second in 2023: Polanco, Farmer, Gordon, Lewis, Lee, Martin and Julien. It's hard to say your 25 year old batting champ, silver slugger winner is replaceable, but this is as close as you're going to get. Meanwhile the only vets in the rotation are all only signed for 2023 and several are coming off injuries, so stability there is a concern.

But I don't see what FL was up to here. Missing a SS means you should go get a SS, not another 2B. They had a couple 2B vets ready to go that weren't playing SS already, so I'm not sure how a third was going to paper over the gap. Maybe they trade Jazz or immediately turn Arreaz for something tremendous? It's 4D chess and I'm not keeping up.

I think I like this trade more for the Twins, but I really just like this trade as a baseball fan. This feels like a very old-school trade, two teams trying to take assets where they have a surplus in exchange for where they have a need. Legit good, young players. Not based on AAVs or contracts. It is fun, and baseball could use more fun.

The Marlins say that Arraez will play 2B, Segura 3B, and yes Jazz CF.
Wendle or Groshans to SS I guess, and Berti is spackle where needed.