The thrill of the chase
There's a long way to go, but Luis Arraez could be poised to take a swing at history
Ty Cobb and Rogers Hornsby did it 3 times each, and George Sisler did it twice.
Shoeless Joe Jackson and Cobb both did it in 1911, while the threesome of Cobb, Sisler and Hornsby turned the trick in 1922.
Sisler and Hornsby did it for different teams in the same city in that 1922 season.
It happened 7 times between 1920 and 1925, but it’s only occurred twice since.
Bill Terry of the New York Giants was the last National Leaguer to do it in 1930.
And Red Sox legend Ted Williams was the last in the AL or NL to do it in 1941. 50 years later, he said if he’d known what a big deal it would wind up being, he would have done it again.
But he didn’t. And no AL or NL player has done it in 82 seasons since.
.400 is one of Baseball’s magic numbers. And 5 weeks into the 2023 season, Marlins second baseman Luis Arraez has the look of a hitter who could make a run at staking his claim to a piece of major league history.
After going 3-for-4 in a 4-1 Marlins loss to the Cubs at Wrigley Field yesterday, Arraez owns a .437 average in 29 games and 103 official at-bats.
There’s a long way to go, but it’s tantalizing to consider the possibility.
Can Arraez possibly make a legitimate run through the summer?
Since Williams hit .406 in 1941, only 4 players have even hit .380 in a major league season.
Williams himself hit 388 as a 38-year-old in 1957.
20 years later, Rod Carew, a mentor of Arraez’s, batted .388 for the 1977 Twins.
In 1980, Royals third baseman George Brett batted .390.
And in 1994, Tony Gwynn was batting .394 on August 12 when major league players went on strike. Ultimately, the remainder of the season was canceled, costing Gwynn the shot at history he desperately wanted.
When Ted Williams made his run at a 2nd .400 season in 1957, his average last sat at the .400 mark on June 5, when he was hitting .401 through 41 games. He batted a mere .381 over his final 91 games, and ended the year on a 12-for-18 tear in September.
He finished 5 hits shy of batting .400. 5 more hits in the same number of at-bats would have done the trick for the Splendid Splinter.
In what he would call his finest season, Williams finished 2nd in AL MVP voting behind Mickey Mantle in ‘57. He led the league in batting, OBP (.526), slugging (.731) and OPS (1.237), while collecting 28 doubles, a triple, 38 home runs and 87 RBI. At age 38, he walked 119 times with only 43 strikeouts.
Panamanian-born Rod Carew had already won 5 batting titles and gone to 10 All-Star Games in 10 seasons when he flirted with .400 in 1977.
He and Williams were featured together on the cover of a Sports Illustrated issue dated July 16 of that year, 36 seasons after Williams had hit .406 and 6 days after Carew’s average last sat above .400, at .401 through 81 games.
He hit “just” .375 over his final 74 games, and closed the year on a torrid streak, batting .492 (31-for-63) in his last 16 games, elevating his average to the final .388 mark from .376.
At age 31, Carew was the American League MVP in 1977, leading the league not just in batting but also in OBP (.449), OPS (1.019) and triples (16). His 38 doubles, 16 triples, 14 homers and 100 RBI were all personal bests, and he added 23 stolen bases for good measure. Carew worked 69 walks and fanned only 55 times in his magical ‘77 campaign en route to the 6th of his 7 AL batting titles.
When it was all said and done, Carew wound up 8 hits shy of .400.
In his age 27 season, George Brett was the AL MVP in 1980, leading the league in batting (.390), OBP (.454), slugging (.664) and OPS (1.118). He banged 33 doubles, 9 triples and 24 homers, while driving in 118 runs in 117 games.
Incredibly, Brett was batting just .247 through 27 games on May 21. Beginning with a 2-for-5 game vs. Oakland on May 22, the Kansas City third baseman batted .464 over his next 64 games, lifting his average to .407 through 91 games on August 26. Included in that stretch was a 30-game hitting streak, during which Brett batted .467. Also included in that stretch was a 34-game stint on the disabled list due to a torn ligament in his ankle.
After peaking at .407, he’d fall of to .326 in his last 26 games to finish at .390, but 3 consecutive 2-hit games had his average at an even .400 through 104 games on September 19, the latest in a season any big leaguer has been at .400 since Williams achieved the feat in 1941.
Brett ended the 1980 season 5 hits shy of batting .400.
Over the course of 20 Hall of Fame seasons with the Padres, Tony Gwynn won a National League record-tying 8 batting titles and collected 3,141 hits.
But never did he swing the bat better than at the age of 34 in 1994.
And what made his season all the more incredible is that the San Diego right fielder primarily used only one bat all year. While big league hitters have been known to break 20, 30, 50, even—in some extreme cases—well over 100 bats in a full season, Gwynn found a magical 7-grain piece of ash lumber he nicknamed “7 grains of pain.”
And he stuck with it.
While he didn’t use the bat against some tough lefthanders, who he feared would run the ball in on him and potentially break the bat, he used it in the bulk of his at-bats over the course of what was a remarkably consistent season. Gwynn batted .395 in April, .392 in May, .387 in June, .370 in July and .475 in August.
Gwynn was in the midst of 7 multi-hit games in a 10-game span when major league players went on strike August 12. He was hitting .394, and his average was rising like a helium balloon.
Gwynn hit every single day during the strike, committing himself to being in peak playing condition whenever the strike might end. But on September 14, Commissioner Bud Selig announced the cancellation of the season.
I talked about 1994 with Tony a lot over our years working together. He was convinced he would have hit .400 had the season been played to completion. More than anything, he said he wished he could have experienced the pressure of trying to make that run in September and dealing with the intense media scrutiny that would have come his way. Tony thrived in situations like that.
Sadly, he never got the chance to try to finish the job.
With the Padres’ final 45 games canceled, Gwynn ended the year batting .394 with a league-best .454 OBP, a .568 slugging percentage and a 1.022 OPS in 110 games. He collected 35 doubles, a triple and 12 home runs, driving in 64.
Gwynn was 3 hits shy of a .400 average.
As for “7 grains of pain,” Tony took the bat with him to spring training in 1995. Not feeling comfortable at the plate at one point in Peoria, AZ, he reached for his favorite bat and stepped in for a batting practice session with coach Rob Picciolo.
Peach accidentally did what no NL pitcher could do in 1994. He broke “7 grains of pain.”
“It died on field 7,” Tony would recount years later.
The last man to bat .400, Ted Williams was a San Diego native. He began his professional career in 1936 at age 17 with the minor league San Diego Padres. Those San Diego roots and their excellence at the plate connected Williams to Gwynn, and the 2 greats sat down face-to-face to talk hitting several times over the years. Below is a conversation they had in 1995, moderated by Bob Costas.
So over the last 82 years, only Ted Williams, Rod Carew, George Brett and Tony Gwynn have even come close.
Is it now Luis Arraez’s turn to make a run at .400?
The biggest thing Arraez has going for him is, quite simply, he’s a proven big league hitter. The 2022 AL batting champion with the Twins, he hit .314 over his first 4 big league seasons, topping .300 in 3 of the 4 years.
So this isn’t some .273 lifetime hitter who has gotten off to a good start. At age 26, the man has a resume.
He has always had elite bat-to-ball skills. He makes consistent contact and limits his strikeouts. Arraez has struck out in only 8.1 percent of his career plate appearances, while the average major league K rate over the last 5 seasons has been 22.9 percent
Arraez has fanned in a career-low 5.2 percent of his plate appearances so far in 2023 while the league is again fanning, on average, at a 22.9 percent rate.
The Miami second baseman has only 6 K’s in 116 plate appearances this year. 5 big leaguers, including the Marlins’ Bryan De La Cruz, have fanned 5 times in 5 trips to the plate in a single game this season.
Putting the bat on the ball is vital, especially when you have a .454 batting average on balls in play (BABIP) as Arraez does, dwarfing the major league average of .298.
But that brings us to one of the things he has working against him in his quest to finish at .400.
When your BABIP is as other-worldly as his is right now, history indicates that’s impossible to sustain. His career BABIP into 2023 was .336. He’s clearly hit into some good luck so far this season.
His current .454 BABIP over a full season would be the highest by a qualifying hitter in ML history. Ty Cobb had a .443 BABIP (although no one knew it!) when he batted .419 for the Tigers in 1911.
In the MLB Wild Card era (since 1995), only 3 qualifying hitters have sustained a .400 BABIP over a full season:
Yoan Moncada had a .406 BABIP and hit .315 for the White Sox in 2019.
Jose Hernandez had a .404 BABIP and hit .288 for the Brewers in 2002.
Manny Ramirez had a .404 BABIP and batted .351 for the Indians in 2000.
Bottom line: It’s going to be hard for Arraez to sustain this level of BABIP good fortune. There’s regression to the mean. Water finds its level.
As Guardians manager Terry Francona is fond of saying, “There’s a reason why they’re called averages.”
For Arraez, part of the challenge in sustaining his BABIP (and his extraordinary average) is that his average exit velocity this season is only 88.3 MPH, which is exactly his career average. That’s below the 2023 ML average of 89.0 MPH.
He ranks 165th in MLB in average exit velocity, and exit velocity matters over the course of a long season. When you play 162 games and pile up 500+ plate appearances, hitting the ball hard, and doing so often, matters. History shows hard contact produces more hits. A lot of hard contact produces even more hits. To this point, Arraez has enjoyed extraordinary success without a lot of hard contact.
He ranks 258th out of 267 qualifying major leaguers with a 22.1 percent hard hit rate, meaning only 22.1 percent of his batted balls leave the bat at 95 MPH+. Minnesota’s Joey Gallo leads the majors at 66.7 percent. Jorge Soler and Avi Garcia lead the Marlins at 50 percent. Arraez actually ranks last in hard hit rate among Miami regulars.
Two final points that would seem to work against Arraez. I mentioned above how only a handful of hits separated 1957 Williams, 1977 Carew, 1980 Brett and 1994 Gwynn from .400 based on their final at-bat total.
Players who walk a lot, thus limiting their total number of at-bats, would have a bit of an advantage in chasing .400 as—with fewer official at-bats—they need fewer hits.
Arraez has walked in 9.5 percent of his plate appearances this season, which is just slightly above the ML average of 8.8 percent. That 9.5 percent rate is up from his career average of 8.7 percent coming into this season, but it wouldn’t seem to be high enough to give him a significant advantage in trying to get to .400.
Finally, when trying to scratch and claw for every hit you possibly can in pursuit of a .400 season, Arraez would benefit from maybe coming up with some cheap infield hits. He has only 3 this year and only 44 in his 5-year ML career.
For all the skills Arraez possesses, he is not blessed with the speed that’s often required to leg out infield hits. Arraez ranks 163rd out of 217 big league qualifiers in sprint speed this season at 26.3 feet/second. Kansas City’s Bobby Witt Jr. leads the majors at 30.5 feet/second. Among Marlins teammates, only Jorge Soler, Yuli Gurriel and Garrett Cooper are slower.
It’s only May 6, and the Marlins have played a mere 33 games.
But Luis Arraez has, if nothing else, put himself in a position where it’s at least worth considering whether a run at .400 could be in the cards.
And going back to Ted Williams in 1941, only a handful of Baseball’s greatest stars can even say they’ve done that.
13 AL AND NL PLAYERS TO HIT .400 SINCE 1900
Nap Lajoie, PHA (1901) .426
Joe Jackson, CLE (1911) .408
Ty Cobb, DET (1911) .419
Ty Cobb, DET (1912) .409
George Sisler, SLB (1920) .407
George Sisler, SLB (1922) .420
Rogers Hornsby, STL (1922) .401
Ty Cobb, DET (1922) .401
Harry Heilmann, DET (1923) .401
Rogers Hornsby, STL (1924) .424
Rogers Hornsby, STL (1925) .403
Bill Terry, NYG (1930) .401
Ted Williams, BOS (1941) .406
All great points. I still think multi-hit games is significant simply because of the way the arithmetic works with 4-5 ABs per game. I didn't realize how few hits away from .400 those guys were. I am super excited about his season. It's a little like watching Ichiro going for 3000. But this is even more significant. First, to me it's more historically significant. Second, if he does it, the entire accomplishment is as a Marlin.
Excellent analysis! Your point on Arraez's low walk rate is right on. Perhaps countering that is his ability to collect multi-hit games. It would be interesting to know how many multi-hit games Carew, Gwynn and Brett had in their near-.400 years compared to Arraez's multi-hit rate in this young season. In any event, Arraez is a reason all by himself for all baseball fans to be tuning into the Marlins.