WASHINGTON – No season – even the best, truly historical campaigns – can be perfect. Baseball is just too difficult, too exhausting, too fundamentally rooted in failure. Whether it’s a team or a player, even the most flawless seasons will come with their glitches. Perhaps the Marlins’ second baseman Luis Arraez is already past his.
After suffering a season best without a goal in the last three games, Arraez continued his march into history with Miami’s 6-5 win over the Nationals on Friday at Nationals Park.
Arraez — who hit .402 just last weekend — hit a home run as part of a five-hit night and brought his batting average back to .390 in the team’s 70th game of 2023. He ran three runs and scored two goals before Yuli Gurriel hit the winning run from second place with Garrett Cooper’s green pinch-hit infield single in the eighth, helping the Marlins get another shaky start from Sandy Alcantara.
“Baseball is hard, hitting .400 is hard — but it’s not impossible,” Arraez said. “I want to land a hit with every shot.”
Since Ted Williams in 1941, no one has reached the .400 mark in an entire season or come as close since Ted Williams in 1941 as Tony Gwynn’s .394 mark in the 1994 season, when strikes were shortened. In fact, many thought this might be the week that Arraez’s quest for .400 earlier in the season finally failed. And maybe that was it. Even after his big night on Friday, Arraez would still need to hit four straight hits or hit at a clip of .500 in the next 22 shots to reach .400 — at least in the short term.
However, the season lasts another 3 1/2 months. So maybe all Arraez needs to do is get hot again and persevere. Friday’s try put him back within striking distance and certainly in a better position than a few hours ago. Arraez arrived at Nationals Park on Friday with a .378 batting average — his lowest starting game batting average since June 2 (.374). He finished the day 12 points clear and closed the gap by five strokes.
“Five for five,” Arraez said. “That is nice.”
Arraez hit a single to put the game ahead, cracked a two-run home run to right field in his second at-bat, and added three more singles in his next three at-bats, including an RBI single in the fourth . Arraez’s second five-hit game of 23 made him the second player in franchise history, alongside Juan Pierre in 2005, to accomplish the feat multiple times in a single season. It also put him back in contention with Bo Bichette for the MLB scoring lead, with 96. The next closest player in the National League is Ronald Acuña Jr. at 92.
Acuña also ranks second behind Arraez in batting average in MLB. His .327 mark is 63 points behind Arraez, who won the 2022 AL batting title with Minnesota. Arraez also leads MLB on base percentage with a .441.
“What he’s doing is special,” said Nationals starter Trevor Williams. “To hit five like he did today and keep good shots off the relievers, he’s a really good hitter. When you make a game plan for a hitter like that, you see the .380, you see the .400 and you say, “Well, he’s going to get his hits.” … That’s the type of hitter he is. He’s a great addition to this line-up.”
The last time Arraez went above .400 was at the end of the game on June 10, when he hit .402 after the Marlins’ win over the White Sox. He then went 1-17 in his next four games, including 0-12 in the club’s three-game streak in Seattle. That streak marked the first time this year that Arraez failed to score in three straight games.
“He feels like when he’s a little nervous, [that’s when] He’s going to get really hot,” said manager Skip Schumaker. “He got 0 to 15 or whatever it was and today he came in and said he was going to get a four [hits]. He says that every day.
“A lot of people think that 0v15 can become 0v19. He’s the guy who thinks he gets really hot when he has weaknesses. That’s the difference in mindset, to the elite guys and those who are afraid to fail.”