The San Diego Padres acquired two-time batting champion Luis Arraez from the Miami Marlins. tThe team made the announcement Saturday morning.
marlins receive In exchange for second baseman, RHP Ko Woo-seok, 1B Nathan Martorella, OF Dillon Head, and OF Jacob Marcy.
The Marlins are also acquiring OF Jacob Marcy in return, according to sources. It’s a 4-for-1 trade with Head the headliner. It’s not a joke.
— Craig Mish (@CraigMish) May 4, 2024
A two-time All-Star, Arraez won the league’s batting title in each of the past two seasons. Last season, he hit .354/.393/.469 with 10 home runs and 69 RBIs for Miami, all career highs. Before that, he won the AL Hitter’s title with a slash line of .316/.375/.420 in 2022 while playing for the Minnesota Twins.
Arraez has played in 33 games this season, hitting .299/.347/.372 with five RBIs and zero home runs.
Arraez joins a Padres team with an established infield that includes veterans Jake Cronenworth, Ha-sung Kim, Xander Bogaerts and Manny Machado. He could split time between designated hitter and rotation to San Diego’s infield. He will be leaving Miami after spending more than one season with the Marlins. He played his first four MLB seasons with the Twins and was traded to the Marlins in January 2023.
The Padres are off to a strong start with a 17-18 record for second place in the National League West, 4.5 games behind the first-place Los Angeles Dodgers. Arraez’s addition strengthens the team’s lineup as it competes for a wild-card spot in the National League.
Meanwhile, the Marlins got off to the worst start in baseball history with 9 wins and 25 losses. They will add four pieces for the future, but have little hope of competing this season.
What will the Padres add with Arraez?
Is anyone at all surprised that AJ Preller was the GM who was willing to make a big win-now trade a few months before the deadline? Or will the Marlins, who are off to a terrible start and are moving full steam ahead toward a rebuild, jump at the chance to trade a veteran for a promising player? No, no. But the players involved in this rare May blockbuster are certainly intriguing.
First, why do the Padres need Arraez? For the first month of the season, San Diego looked much weaker on the mound (22nd in ERA+) than in the batting lineup, but the Padres only played one game. Ranked in the MLB top 10 in both points per game and OPS+. That said, Manny Machado appears ready to return full-time to third base after offseason elbow surgery, and the DH spot he occupied for most of April will be filled. The position remains vacant with no obvious candidate.
And while this offense looks strong at times, it could use another left-handed stick — no more Juan Soto dudes, remember? Arraez is an attractive hitter to acquire, but he won’t offer even a fraction of the power that Soto does — Arraez currently leads all of MLB as a batter with the most at-bats and zero home runs. Yes, but the 27-year-old definitely has elite offensive skills in his ability to make an extraordinary amount of contact. This is an area where San Diego already excels as a team, and Arraez will only accentuate it.
No matter where manager Mike Shildt chooses to put him in the lineup, Arraez will be an added headache for opposing pitchers who are already tasked with getting around legitimate star hitters like Machado and Fernando Tatis Jr. It will become the seed of I think Arraez will be in this lineup even if he doesn’t have much extra base hitting. Significantly more difficult for opponents. His contract runs through next season, and it’s hard to know exactly how Arraez will fit into the Padres’ already overcrowded infield plans, but 2025 means little at this point. do not have. This is about adding good big league hitters and bottoming out the roster by any means necessary. In this case, the idea is to trade away a player who can definitely help Miami someday.
What did the Marlins receive in return?
The first thing to acknowledge on the Marlins side of this trade is that a lot has changed since Miami acquired Arraez from Minnesota for right-hander Pablo Lopez for the 2023 season. It was an attempt to convert the Marlins’ pitching depth into offensive power that the team desperately needed to win. In a sense, it worked. Arraez hit .354 and the Marlins advanced to the postseason. But as we now know, not much went right in Miami beyond that, including Lopez blossoming into the Twins’ ace. Still, considering Arraez’s trade goals, it makes no sense to compare the prospect to Lopez. It’s about rushing a rebuild with prospects who can help for years to come, rather than fixing short-term problems like the one Arraez was called up to do. do.
With that in mind, I think Miami did pretty well. One of the best closers in the KBO over the past five years, Go signed a two-year, $4.5 million contract with San Diego this offseason, but was unable to make the team out of camp and continued pitching in Double-A. There is. The beginning of the year. Despite his extensive professional experience in South Korea, the right-hand man is still only 25 years old. I expect to see him make his MLB debut at some point later this year as the Marlins try to figure out what he can be.
Murthy, a 2022 sixth-round pick out of Central Michigan, was active in last year’s Arizona Fall League (1.215 OPS, league MVP), but struggled to start this season at Double-A. He is expected to be a speedy fourth outfielder with strong OBP skills.
I don’t think any of these candidates will definitely contribute regularly in the future, but I think Martorella and Head could be the real prizes here. Masu. Head was selected 25th overall last year out of a Chicago-area high school and stood out in the draft class with his exceptional speed as a center fielder and exciting hitter-ball skills, and was expected to be even better. He added strength in pro ball as well. He’s not off to a great start in Low-A, but he’ll be 19 during the season, giving him plenty of time to adjust to the pro level and start climbing the prospect list again.
Finally, Martorella is a first baseman through and through. He has been mashing since his days at the University of California and continues to show a very polished approach with a .392 OBP in his first month at Double-A. He’s not the slugger you’d expect from a first baseman, but he’s a very advanced hitter and Miami will be looking to help him graduate to the big leagues over the next year or so. For a system lacking offensive potential, all three of these hitters make plenty of sense for Miami to target in a trade like this.
