If trying to hit .400 is a burden, Luis Arraez and the Marlins don’t feel it

BALTIMORE – Luis Arraez took the late bus to Camden Yards on Friday to begin the second half of the most promising Miami Marlins season of the decade. He usually takes the later bus when the Marlins are on the road but not for any of the usual reasons. Arraez just does as much of his pregame hitting routine alone in his hotel room as he does at the field.

“He probably takes 300, 400 swings today,” teammate Garrett Cooper said before he shook his head. “I know. Crazy.”

On this day, after Arraez spent three days in Seattle being asked about whether he can really hit .400, about what it takes to be a great contact hitter in this baseball age of swing-and-miss, his teammates were particularly eager to see him.

“Two hits, two pitches?” Cooper asked him, by way of greeting, because everyone in the clubhouse had watched Arraez deliver two first-pitch singles in his second All-Star Game appearance.

“Why don’t you do that during the season?” Joey Wendle asked. Then Wendle walked toward his teammates, made a sound something between a “pshhh” and a raspberry and chuckled heartily to himself. The joke, of course, is that Arraez does do that during the season. He does it better than anyone.

The 26-year-old, whom the Marlins acquired from the Minnesota Twins in a somewhat surprising trade last winter, has emerged not only as the most credible threat to hit .400 that MLB has seen in quite some time but also as the heart and soul of a Marlins team that began the second half with more wins than anyone in the National League except the omnipotent Atlanta Braves.

“I don’t watch my numbers. They tell me my numbers on social media, but everybody asks can you hit .400?” Arraez said. “I just try to help my team and then stay healthy.”

The smooth left-handed swing with which Arraez pounces on pitches, the one he hones in hotel rooms across America, has yielded 130 hits in 89 games – a 236-hit pace. In seasons since 2000, only Ichiro Suzuki and Darin Erstad had accumulated so many.

Every time he has looked in danger of letting his average plummet out of range, Arraez has turned in four- and five-hit games just for the heck of it. He logged his sixth game of the season with at least four hits Saturday night against the Baltimore Orioles, passing Hanley Ramirez for a Marlins single-season record. Entering Sunday, Arraez had missed on just 7.7 percent of his swings this season. No one else’s percentage was in the single digits. The major league average is just less than 26 percent. He struck out in 5.1 percent of his at-bats this year. The second-best number – Washington Nationals catcher Keibert Ruiz’s 9.6 percent – was nearly double that.

“We just finished playing them, and we couldn’t get him out,” Philadelphia Phillies Manager Rob Thomson, who hit Arraez sixth in his NL lineup, said at the All-Star Game. “He’s really an incredible hitter. He knows the strike zone. He has a short stroke. Uses the entire field. He’s not a plus-plus runner, so to have the average he does right now – and he doesn’t strike out – it’s really incredible.”

At baseball times like these, such as when Aaron Judge chased 62 home runs or when a pitcher reaches the seventh inning of a perfect game, the magical milestone gains weight. It applies pressure. It becomes a burden.

But while Arraez occasionally betrays some annoyance with questions about .400, neither he nor the rest of Marlins’ clubhouse seems weighed down by their respective unprecedented pressures.

Far from dancing around .400, for example, Arraez’s Marlins teammates will smile and call him “Tony Gwynn,” the San Diego Padres outfielder who was hitting .394 when the players went on strike in August 1994.

“I know it’s hard hitting .300. A lot of people hit .200. It’s hard,” Arraez said, emphasizing that the key to his second half will be staying healthy enough to try. “… But if God gives me the opportunity, let’s see if I can do it.”

It is also hard – or would seem to be – to make the postseason in a division as loaded as the NL East is this year. The massive payrolls of the New York Mets and Philadelphia Phillies seemed likely to elbow the Braves for the top three spots in the division. The first spot up for grabs was supposed to be No. 4.

But rookie manager Skip Schumacher’s Marlins began the second half with a firm lead on the second spot in their division and the first wild-card spot. Even after being swept by the Orioles, Miami still can claim both.

The Marlins’ young starting rotation is striking out more batters than all but three others, even amid a down year from reigning Cy Young Award winner Sandy Alcantara. Their Arraez-esque offense has the third-highest batting average in the majors (.264 as of Sunday morning). They probably will need to add power to that lineup at the trade deadline. They could use a good right-handed reliever or two. And they are likely to have to withstand a second-half streak from the Phillies or Mets, though New York could make things easier if it decides to sell.

“Even though Sandy has had a little bit of a slower start – if that guy’s not even doing what he’s supposed to do, there’s so much more room that this team can go,” said Cooper, whose only playoff appearance in six Marlins season came in the shortened 2020 season. “And the hitting, it’s been a whole 1-through-9 difference this year, and that starts with Tony Gwynn over there.”