May 7, 2024
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This week we asked our writers the following:
The Padres acquired Luis Arraez from the Marlins. Should the Yankees have acquired Arraez?
Here are their replies:
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Tim Kabel - Under other circumstances, I think the Yankees should have acquired Luis Arraez. however, they have Gleyber Torres, Who is practically untradable at second base. If they acquired Arraez, Torres would officially become dead weight.
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Ed Botti - Luis Arraez was one of my my off-season targets, if they decided to move on from Torres, which would have made sense. Both are in walk years. Arraez has offensive skills this Yankee team could have used.
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Paul Semendinger - Weeks ago, I stated that I was all-in on Arraez. This was a missed opportunity. I think everyone is surprised at how poorly Gleyber Torres has played this year. It is clear that the Yankees will need a second baseman in 2025.
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Patrick Gunn - I've shared my thoughts on Arraez before on the Bronx Beat Podcast, and I think he is a solid player. Batting average is a devalued stat, but hitting .300+ every year is not easy and he's doing that while barely striking out (just 6.9% of the time this year). With that said, batting average is not everything. He gets compared to Gleyber Torres a lot, but it's worth noting that Torres still has more home runs this year than Arraez - with one. Arraez beats Torres on overall extra-base hits, but that isn't a high bar given Torres' slump. In other words, Arraez has very little power and is driven solely by his ability to get singles (he also does not walk very much, 13th percentile in walk percentage per Statcast data). That'd be great if he played at least average defense, but he does not. He's routinely been a below-average defensive second baseman (-7 defensive runs saved at the position just this year through Sunday's games per MLB Savant/Stacast data) and isn't much better at first base. He's a singles-hitting designated hitter and that's hard to keep on your roster in today's game. The Twins have not been perfect offensively, but I doubt they regret getting Pablo López in their trade win the Marlins. I could be way off, Arraez is a productive player and one of the best pure hitters in the league, but I don't think the Yankees need to trade for him.
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Andy Singer - I am tempted to say that this was a missed opportunity for the Yankees. Arraez has an incredibly unique skillset. He's the answer to the question, "How valuable would a ballplayer be if they had an 80-grade hit tool and nothing more than a 40-grade tool everywhere else?" The answer: pretty valuable, but flawed. In fact, I'd argue that in order to really use Arraez to his fullest capability, you need to build a roster around his deficiencies. The lineup needs gobs of power and needs to include good infield defenders so that you can play Arraez at DH the vast majority of the time. The Yankees have power, but they really don't have a ton of ability to play him at DH, so he'd need to rotate around the infield. The Yankees have spent the last 3 seasons acquiring groundball pitchers, so Arraez's horrid infield defense certainly isn't a plus.
He has the best pure hit tool in the modern game and hits from the left side, so offensively, of course the Yankees should have been interested, but the reality is that his fit on this roster would have been very strange. A few weeks back, I threw out the idea of a Pereira/Arias package for Arraez. I would argue that the Marlins did a bit better than that in their trade with the Padres. That's a bit rich for my tastes, given that the Yanks have already dealt a fair amount of prospect depth, and are almost certainly looking to use some of their current prospect pool in the near future at the big league level. This is a tough one, but I don't fault the Yanks for matching or exceeding the Padres' package for Arraez.
