The San Francisco Giants have agreed to terms on a one-year pact with free-agent infielder Luis Arraez, according to ESPN. Arraez is expected to earn $12 million and play second base, per El Extrabase.
Arraez, 28, is a three-time All-Star honoree and Batting Title winner. Over the past three seasons, he’s batted .319/.355/.416 (111 OPS+) with seven home runs and eight stolen bases on average. Last year, he hit .292/.327/.392 (99 OPS+) while striking out in a career-low 3.1% of his plate appearances.
Nevertheless, Arraez’s unidimensional offensive game and lack of true defensive or positional value landed him at No. 44 on CBS Sports’ offseason rankings of the winter’s top 50 free agents. Here’s part of what we wrote at the time:
Arraez is a unidimensional player. He doesn’t walk or run often and he can’t field or slug. He’s a pure singles merchant who excels at putting the pine on the cowhide, to the extent that he connected on nearly 95% of his swings. That’s an incredible skill, it’s just not one that’s profitable anymore for teams or individual players. Of course, it only takes one club with an outmoded perspective — or a half-understanding of why the Blue Jays enjoyed so much success this season — for Arraez to land a more lucrative deal than expected.
Arraez joins a Giants team that went 81-81 last season while giving at least 40 second-base appearances to Tyler Fitzgerald, Casey Schmitt, and Christian Koss. Collectively, San Francisco’s second basemen hit .217/.273/.343 with 14 home runs. Arraez should be an upgrade at the plate. The question, then, is how large the advantage will remain when defense is factored into the equation.