Minnesota Twins: What’s next for rookie phenom Luis Arraez?

Arraez dominated at the plate

If there is one thing that excites Twins about Arraez’s future, it’s his ability to hit at the plate. While Arraez doesn’t fit in with the Twins’ desire to hit as many balls out of the park as possible, he makes up for it with his ability to get hits in bunches.

As most rookies will experience, Arraez was fed a steady diet of fastballs in 2019, seeing the heater nearly 60 percent of the time according to Baseball Savant. When he got the fastball, he usually knew what to do with it by hitting .364 off of it. Even when pitchers adapted by throwing offspeed, Arraez still hit .298 and his breaking ball average was a respectable .271 average.

Even more impressive than finding the open holes in the defense was Arraez’s knack for getting his bat on the ball. Arraez didn’t chase often, swinging at 24.3 percent out of the zone, but he had the lowest swinging strike rate in the major leagues, missing pitches in the zone at just a 7.9 percent clip.

The combination of these two made up for Arraez’s lack of power (4 HR in 2019) by sending his average to .334, which would have been the second-highest in MLB behind Chicago’s Tim Anderson (.335) had he qualified. Still, there should be plenty of time to accomplish that feat and many including Cleveland manager Terry Francona believe that a batting title will be in his future.