The San Diego Padres acquired two-time batting champion Luis Arráez from the Miami Marlins, tThe team announced on Saturday morning.
The Marlins will receive RHP Woo-Suk Go, 1B Nathan Martorella, OF Dillon Head and OF Jakob Marsee in exchange for second baseman.
Marlins are also receiving OF Jacob Marsee in exchange for the source deal. It’s a 4-for-1 deal, with Head being the main attraction. No pun intended.
– Craig Mish (@CraigMish) May 4, 2024
A two-time All-Star, Arráez has won a league batting title in each of the last two seasons. He slashed .354/.393/.469 with 10 home runs and 69 RBI in Miami last season, all career highs. Before that, he won the 2022 AL batting title with a .316/.375/.420 slash line while playing for the Minnesota Twins.
In 33 games so far this season, Arráez is slashing .299/.347/.372 with five RBI and zero home runs.
Arráez joins a Padres team with an established infield featuring veterans Jake Cronenworth, Ha-Seong Kim, Xander Bogaerts and Manny Machado. He could split time between designated hitter and the rotation for San Diego’s infield. He will leave Miami after spending one more season with the Marlins. He played his first four MLB seasons with the Twins before being traded to the Marlins in January 2023.
The Padres are off to a 17-18 start, which is good for second place in the NL West, and are 4.5 games behind the first-place Los Angeles Dodgers. Arráez’s arrival bolsters their lineup as they plan to compete for an NL wild card spot.
Meanwhile, the Marlins had one of the worst starts in baseball, going 9-25. They will add four pieces for the future, with little hope of competing this season.
What are the Padres adding with Arráez?
Is anyone remotely surprised that AJ Preller is the GM willing to take a big swing at a win-now trade months before the deadline? Or that the Marlins, off to a terrible start and heading full steam ahead toward a rebuild, would jump at the opportunity to trade a veteran for a package of prospects? No, it is not. The actors involved in this rare May blockbuster, however, are certainly intriguing.
For starters, why exactly do the Padres need Arráez? Through the first month of the season, San Diego has looked much weaker on the mound (22nd in ERA+) than in the lineup, where the Padres rank in the top 10 in MLB in runs per game and OPS+. That said, with Manny Machado apparently ready to return to third base full-time after offseason elbow surgery, the DH spot he held for much of April has opened up with no obvious candidates to fill it.
And while that offense sometimes looks strong, he could use another left stick – that Juan Soto guy isn’t around anymore, remember? Arráez is a fascinating bat to acquire, but he won’t provide even a fraction of the power that Soto provided – Arráez currently leads all of MLB as the hitter with most plate appearances with zero home runs – but the 27-year-old unquestionably possesses skill. elite offense in his ability to make an exceptional amount of contact. This is already an area where San Diego excels as a team, and Arráez will accentuate that even further.
Wherever manager Mike Shildt decides to place him in the lineup, Arráez will be an additional headache for opposing pitchers already tasked with navigating around legitimate bats such as Machado and Fernando Tatis Jr. making him markedly more challenging for opponents. With him under contract through next season, it’s difficult to know how Arráez fits into the Padres’ already overcrowded infield plans, but 2025 means little right now. It’s about adding a good big league hitter and bulking up the roster by any means necessary — in this case, trading players who could certainly help Miami someday.
What did the Marlins get in return?
The first thing to recognize about the Marlins’ side of this trade is that a lot has changed since Miami acquired Arráez from Minnesota for right-hander Pablo Lopez ahead of the 2023 season. This was an attempt to turn the Marlins’ pitching depth into an offense extremely necessary as the team tried to win. In a way, it worked: Arráez hit .354 and the Marlins reached the postseason. But as we now know, nothing worked for Miami beyond that, including Lopez becoming an ace for the Twins. Still, it doesn’t make sense to compare this package of prospects to Lopez, considering the goal of an Arráez trade now: to start a rebuild with prospects who can help in the coming years, rather than solving a short-term problem like that of Arráez. to do.
With that in mind, I think Miami did very well. Go, one of the KBO’s best closers over the past half-decade, signed a two-year, $4.5 million deal with San Diego last offseason, but was unable to get the team out of camp and has been pitching Double-A to start the year. Despite his vast professional experience in Korea, the right-hander is only 25 years old; I hope to see him make his MLB debut at some point later this year as the Marlins try to figure out what he can be.
Marsee, a 2022 sixth-round pick out of Central Michigan, starred in last year’s Arizona Fall League (1.215 OPS, league MVP) but struggled at Double-A to start this season. He projects as a quick fourth outfielder with strong OBP skills.
While I don’t consider either of these prospects to be regular, surefire contributors in the future, I think Martorella and Head could end up being the real prizes here. Head was the 25th overall pick last year out of a Chicago-area high school, standing out in his draft class for his exceptional speed in center field and his exciting bat-to-ball skills, with the hope that more power could emerge as he adds strength in professional football. He hasn’t gotten off to a hot start in Low-A, but he will be 19 all season long and will have plenty of time to adjust to the pro level and start climbing prospect lists.
Lastly, Martorella is always a first baseman. He’s been grinding since his college days at Cal and continues to demonstrate a really polished approach with a .392 OBP in Double-A through his first month. Not as much of a hit as you’d like in a first baseman, but he’s a really advanced hitter who Miami will now try to help graduate to the big leagues in the next year or so. For a system starved of any semblance of offensive potential, all three of these hitters made a lot of sense for Miami to target in a deal like this.
