Let's Try to Align a Defense Against Luis Arráez

Plenty of batters who make frequent contact do so on the ground, or towards predictable and easily defended areas of the diamond. In his stellar rookie season, Arráez avoided those traps. He showed an almost Joe Mauer-like ability to smack medium-strength line drives into the areas just beyond infielders and in front of outfielders, especially on the left side of the diamond. He’s excruciatingly hard to defend.

Even Mauer, however, eventually saw opponents begin to realign their defense, swinging their outfielders well toward left field in an effort to foil his opposite-field approach. Let’s ask ourselves, then, how teams might adjust to Arráez, too. Since he’s both slow-footed and lacking in power, there are certain ways they can do so, but it will take something we’d normally regard as radical and irrational, and it might well be that Arráez could counteradjust and foil those defensive strategies.

Above is Arráez’s spray chart, color-coded by batted-ball trajectory, for 2019. It is extraordinary. The sheer number of line drives, which are hard to defend even for a well-positioned team, is impressive, and the way he both peppered the shallow outfield area with liners and drove the ball to the alleys with relative consistency makes for headaches for any outfield coordinator. Arráez even sprays his grounders a bit more than most left-handed hitters do, deterring would-be defensive shifts.

One strategy teams frequently used against Mauer, however, could also allow them to pose problems for Arráez. Because Mauer didn’t run well, aggressive teams would move their second basemen a handful of steps out into right field, despite keeping both their third basemen and shortstops in standard positioning on the left side. Since Arráez doesn’t hit many balls hard, a second baseman could play him quite deep, widening his lateral range, and still have plenty of time to both reach the ball and throw out the plodding youngster.

Meanwhile, whereas Mauer was capable of pulling the ball hard down the first-base line at times, Arráez did little of that last season. Thus, the first baseman could plausibly play well off the line, further cutting down the space into which Arráez might fit a hit on the right side. On the other side, teams have a chance to get even more radical. Again, Arráez doesn’t exactly scorch the ball most of the time, especially when going the other way with a pitch on the outer part of the plate. That could allow the third baseman to play drastically shallow, cutting off many grounders that would otherwise become hits.

In turn, that would permit the shortstop to play much deeper than normal, handling hot shots to the left side of the infield and in position to go back on and snag some of the lofted line drives Arráez turned into singles last year. Both middle infielders, in fact, would essentially be playing rover roles, taking hits that fell between the infield and outfield last year and turning them into outs.

That leaves the outfielders. The right fielder would, in all likelihood, do well to play Arráez more or less straight-away. Like Mauer, Arráez tends to drill the ball when he does turn on it and elevate, so the only high-percentage play to that field is to play it straight and be ready to catch those line drives when they’re close enough.

The center fielder’s job is harder. Arráez puts pressure on them by hitting to both gaps, and by occasionally lofting a ball to dead center field that requires them to go back to the wall. So many more of his batting balls are lower-trajectory hits to the middle of the diamond, though, that center fielders should still play quite shallowly against him. Given his lack of top-end speed, a good center fielder should be able to hold him to a double even if he gets the ball over his head, and those types of hits off Arráez’s bat are much less common than ones that drop in front of a center fielder in standard position.

In left field, Arráez varies from Mauer. He doesn’t hit the ball hard down the line often. He’s more prone to drive it toward the gap. As a result, the left fielder needs to stay off the line, resulting in a pinched alignment, but he can’t play too shallowly. In this scenario, he’d be able to afford to play at average depth, ready to go back and collect well-struck would-be doubles to the gap, because the shortstop would help cover shallow flies and liners.

It’s interesting to imagine how Tony Gwynn would have handled defensive shifts. He had an extraordinary ability to punch the ball through the gap on the left side of the infield; he surpassed 3,000 hits by honing that skill. Had teams positioned themselves as flexibly and proactively during his playing days as they do now, however, Gwynn would have had to come up with a new way to find hits, retaining that touch when the hole was left open but able to scorch the ball through the right side when teams overcompensated. Of course, were he playing now, he’d also have to contend with much more strikeout-focused, high-velocity pitching than he saw in the 1980s and 1990s.

Arráez shares a number of key traits with Gwynn, even if the comparison seems unfair. It’s fun to imagine how a team might try to torture and negate his skill set, but it’s also important to remembr that Arráez has shown a balanced skill set at the plate. If forced to, he might well make a major adjustment and become an equally dangerous (though fundamentally different) hitter.

MORE FROM TWINS DAILY

— Latest Twins coverage from our writers

— Recent Twins discussion in our forums

— Follow Twins Daily via Twitter, Facebook or email