The New Field of Dreams: Baseball Could Have Its First .400 Hitter Since Ted Williams

An infielder for the Miami Marlins, Luis Arráez, rapped five hits in five at bats on a Monday night at Florida, which would itself be remarkable. It is no product of a misprint or a mathematical error, though, to observe that his average for the season, halfway through this 2023 campaign, is .400. A record at the plate of .300 is considered excellent. .400 is scarcely believable.One year after the Yankee slugger Aaron Judge broke the American League record for home runs in a season, a very different player — slight, speedy, expert at putting bat on ball rather than launching tape measure big flies — is mounting a bid for a .400 season. That would be a feat as nearly as rare as a tooth from a hen. The last time a major league baseball player hit .400, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was president, the world was at war but the attack on Pearl Harbor was months away, and the top pop song in the country was “Chattanooga Choo Choo.” The left-handed slugger for the Boston Red Sox, Ted Williams, hit .406. Fifty years later, Williams, who was in that golden age of nicknames known as “The Kid,” “Teddy Ballgame” and “The Splendid Splinter,” quipped that “If I had known hitting .400 was going to be such a big deal I would have done it again.” He never did, but now Mr. Arráez, a left-handed hitter with a bat quicker than a whippet, is threatening. That Mr. Arráez, nicknamed “La Regadera,” or “The Sprinkler,” for how he sprays hits all over the field, has touched .400 when the league as a whole is batting a mere .249, is remarkable. Baseball in 1941, on the other hand, was lousy with superstars. When Williams hit .406, the American League hit at a .266 clip. The “Yankee Clipper,” Joe DiMaggio, hit in a record 56 straight games and won the Most Valuable Player Award. In the more than eight decades since Williams hit .400, other batsmen have flirted with that magic threshold. In the strike shortened 1994 season, Tony “Mr. Padre” Gwynn hit at a .394 clip, albeit in only 110 contests. In 1980, a Royals’ legend, George Brett, hit .400 deep into September before fading to .390 at season’s end. In 1957, a 38-year-old Williams hit .388, and 20 years later Hall-of-Famer Rod Carew did the same. Now Mr. Arráez has acceded to that rarefied air. According to the Elias Sports Bureau, he became the fourth major leaguer since 1900 to have three five-hit games in a calendar month, bootstrapping up from .375 to .400.To get a sense of Mr. Arráez’s Secretariat-like moment, check the batting average leaderboard. His closest competition for the batting crown of the National League is an outfielder for the Atlanta Braves, Ronald Acuña Jr., who is hitting a sterling .325. He is trailing Mr. Arráez , who has carried the Marlins to five wins in a row, by a chasmic .75 points.Mr. Arráez’s success in knocking out hits comes during an era where batting average has been devalued in favor of other metrics devised by analytics gurus, like “Wins Above Replacement” and “On-Base Plus Slugging.” Third baseman Josh Donaldson, who now plays with the Yankees, once opined that “batting average is the most overrated statistic in the game.” He is hitting .151.Mr. Arráez, who is from Venezuela, played last season for the Minnesota Twins, where he made an All-Star team and paced the American League in hitting, at a .316 clip. His strikeout rate was the lowest in the major leagues, but the Twins still dealt him to the Marlins for a middle-of-the-road pitcher and a couple of prospects.During a post game interview after his five hit Monday masterpiece, a humble Mr. Arráez said simply “I trust myself, and I believe in myself.” He added the rallying cry of the Marlins faithful: “Let’s go Fish.”Correction: Ted Williams batted left-handed and threw right-handed, a combination misstated in the bulldog.

The New Field of Dreams: Baseball Could Have Its First .400 Hitter Since Ted Williams

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