The San Diego Padres traded for 1B/2B Luis Arraez in May of 2024, sending prospects Dillon Head, Jacob Marsee, Nathan Martorella and pitcher Woo-suk Go to the Marlins. Arraez had already won a batting title in 2022 and 2023 as well as being a two-time All-Star.
There has long been a debate within baseball as to what value Arraez brings to a team. It is the thought process behind any discussion about his frequent trade history. Arraez has been in the league since 2019 and is playing for his third team,
having established his hitting prowess after the 2020 season with the Minnesota Twins. He was traded to the Miami Marlins for the 2023 season and then to the Padres after just a season with the Marlins.
With the Padres, Arraez got another batting title in 2024 and went to his third All-Star game. But the discussion continues regarding what he brings to a team and what his value will be when he becomes a free agent at the end of this season.
His reputation as a singles hitter, and the relative poor quality to the rest of his game, could argue that landing a contract after this season could be a challenge. It is not arguable that this is the worst season of his career since establishing himself. His first two seasons had inconsistent playing time and he didn’t break out until 2021.
Using the Fangraphs stats, Arraez has dropped in all hitting categories this season. Not just his average and OBP have dropped, but his hard hit percentage, his barrel percentage, his exit velocity and his launch angle are all down. His OBP, which is arguably the most important of his offensive stats, is .318 so far this year. His previous low was .346 in 2024. His .285 batting average is the first time he has been below .300 since 2021.
A simple way to view his decline this season is with his Baseball Savant page. Remembering that red is good and blue is bad, Arraez profiles as a player who doesn’t swing and miss a lot and squares the ball up well when he hits it, but otherwise is a poor performer in all other categories. His defense and speed are also profiling as below average. If you go back to last season and 2023, you see the steady decline in his offensive performance, while his defense and speed rate out about the same.
WAR is a measurement used to add up all aspects of player performance and assigns a value. It stands for Wins Above Replacement and compares the player to a bench or replacement player in baseball. WAR has not been kind to Arraez through his career because of his single outstanding skill, hitting the ball for a high average. His fWAR (Fangraphs assessment) has ranged from 0.5 in 2020, when he played less, to 3.4 in 2023. For 2025 his fWAR sits at 0.4, down from 1.1 last season. In comparison, the next lowest full-time position player is Jake Cronenworth at 2.4. Gavin Sheets and Jackson Merrill both are below 2.o, but have either missed time or been part-time players.
Fangraphs assigns player value (in dollars) to coincide with the skills and performance of a player. Arraez was valued at $26.9 million in 2023, his best season. For 2025, the valuation sits at $3.6 million. His only other season close to that is 2020 at $4 million.
Although there are some that don’t value what Arraez brings to a team, the Padres obviously do. They have continued to bat him second in the lineup for most of the season, never dropping him to the bottom third, based solely on his past performance and the amount of hits he has (he leads the team in hits).
The discussion remains that a single skill might not be good enough to get a good free agent contract next year and since that single skill has declined significantly, Arraez might have a tough road ahead.
