Luis Arráez’s SHOCKING 2025 Season | Is He OVERRATED or MISUNDERSTOOD?

On today’s fun Friday episode, it is the 2025 season in review for the three-time batting champ and everyone’s favorite player to argue about. Right, it’s Luis Sai player review going over the good, the many, many, many, many, many, many aspects of bad, and overall assessing his value, especially heading into his free agency. You are Locked on Padres, your daily San Diego Padres’s podcast, part of the Locked On Network, your team every day. Greetings, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to another edition of Locked On Padres’s podcast, which is part of the Lockdown Podcast Network, your team every day for Friday, October 24th. As always, I’m your host with sometimes the most, Javier Reyes, and I’ve been covering this team for six years now. and not just for this podcast, but various other outlets, including just baseball.com, chief among them. Today’s episode though, it’s brought to you by FanDuel. Right now, new customers can bet just $5. And if your bet wins, you’ll get $300 in bonus bets to use across the app. Download the FanDuel app today. And on today’s show, guys, we are doing the player reviews. You’ve listened to a bunch of them, my everydayers know. And we’re going to be breaking down the Whis Arise, dare I say, the most controversial and not for like off-field reasons, right? players in the sport, right? This is a guy that people love arguing about. And if you’re an everydayer, you know that I have argued about him for much of the season, and I had a lot of criticisms for him during this year. But again, we’re going to start with the good, get to the bad, and then talk about why I think he’s this almost like culture war character when it comes to baseball nerds, right? Not in terms of like the weird stuff that you hear when you hear about culture war, right? I’m not talking about that stuff. I’m saying like this this mindset of how people get into these arguments over Lua Rise, right? We’re going to talk about that. But first, let’s talk about the good. In terms of his season, Luis Arise hit 292 with a 327 on base, 392 slugging percentage. He was good for a 104 WRC plus. That means 4% better than your average major league batter, 0.9 wins above replacement, and he played in 154 games. Let’s get into the good. Right. The number one thing and frankly I think that this was gonna happen no matter what happened with Luis Rise right this was always going to be the case but it was still present this year. This man is a generational talent at making contact specifically not as a whole player necessarily but you all know it. This guy his ability to put bat to ball is borderline unprecedented. Like you haven’t seen this type of stuff in a long time right? There are other players who are good bat to ball guys. Steven Quan right of the Cleveland Guardians. You could look at Jacob Wilson of the Oakland Athletics. You could look at our boy Tony Gwyn. You could look at plenty of other players throughout baseball history, Pete Rose, all these sort of guys. But when it comes to just not striking out and not whiffing, basically second to none, at least in terms of today’s game, right? He was still in the 100th percentile in whiff rate and strikeout rate. 5.3% and 3.1% respectively of both of those things. It doesn’t matter what pitch you throw, the man is going to find a way to make contact with his bat. And you’re rarely going to get him striking out looking, right? It only happened twice this year. That’s amazing stuff. Like you’re able to look at, say, other players throughout sports. You’re able to appreciate one amazing thing that they might be good at. Let’s take uh football for a second, Justin Fields, bad quarterback. But what you can say is, and I’m not saying that Luis Rise is a awful, terrible player. Like Justin Fields, one of the worst quarterbacks in football this year. But it’s also true, it’s like, dang, can he run, right? Let’s use baseball. Billy Hamilton, not a very good player, but you know what? what he could do, man. He could run and he could steal those bases. You can appreciate a player’s talent, even if you don’t think that it means that they are overall a complete package as a player. But it’s just amazing to see. I mean, genuinely, there were times this year where he’s swinging at pitches that I was like, I I have no idea how he made contact with that. Like, it’s incredible. And it’s against the best pitchers in the sport, not just scrubs. The guy always makes contact. He’s still good at that. Also, he had a a 292 batting average this year, which is much lower than his career standards, don’t get me wrong, but he did that despite a career worst Babip. And Babip is a very introductory advanced stat. It’s an introduction. It’s the first level of advanced stats where it’s batting average on balls in play. And his career average with batting average on balls in play is 329. He only had a 289 this year. That means that he might have got a little bit unlucky, right? more bat balls that he put into play just ended up not being hits, right? He still hit 290. Still doing that is pretty impressive. It’s nice. It is one little bonus little little treat, right, for Luis Rise’s season. Uh that he was able to do that. And usually when you look at someone’s Babip, uh it depends on their speed, right? Luis Rise isn’t very fast, but it just shows you probably should have been a 300 hitter this year. Maybe a little bit unlucky in that department, right? Also, 11 stolen bases is real cute. We love that. We love it that he was running around getting some steals when they needed him to. And lastly, healthy, always available. This was never a problem with him. The only time that he sat games was basically because he want he needed a day off, right? Um, so Arise was there for the Padres’s this year. But unfortunately, guys, and I’m not trying to be me, that’s kind of it when it comes to the positives for Luis Arise. And this is why he could be a frustrating player to cover because this is a guy who unless you literally only look at one stat. And I’m not even talking about advanced stats. If you only look at batting average and you ignore walks, you ignore home runs, you ignore slugging percentage, you ignore WRC plus, you ignore defense, you ignore base running value, you ignore uh pitches per play appearance, and a bunch of other stats that we’re going to get into. That’s the only way that you can reason that Luis Arise had a great year, right? And I think that that’s what makes him so frustrating, right? In terms of new school and old school ideology, that’s why my my guy Big Jim Grease, the host of the Postcast, right, from this year, um you know, Postcast goes live after every, you know, game that the Padres’s play, he goes live and he talks about it. But he was a big Luis Rise guy. Um and I’m not. And I think that Luis Arise is sometimes a player who has a lot more of his value based on reputation and that amazing one skill that he does have when it comes to making contact with the ball, right? Not always for hits, but making contact with the ball. And I think that that’s what makes him fun. And also, it’s just cool to have a player like that in an era of true three outcome baseball, right? It’s just fun to have a player that is like, you know what, you could still kind of be effective even if you’re just a singles guy. That still can be valuable. We could still throw it back to the 60s baseball era, right? It’s just fun and you want players like this to be good because it could be a little bit boring sometimes where you have your Joey Gallow types. You have your, I don’t know, your 240 hitters that, yeah, they hit like, you know, 28 home runs, but you’re like, dang, you only hit 240 and you had a 310 on base. Like, it wasn’t as action-packed per play. Okay. The ball isn’t always moving the way it is in other sports like basketball and and soccer and and and football to a certain extent, right? And I think that’s where a lot of the frustration comes from when it comes to pro Arise people and anti- Arise people. And I am the latter. And we’re going to break down exactly why Luis Arise was bad this year. Other than just looking at wins above replacement or advanced stat, we’re going simple stats and advance in the next segment. But first, I need to talk to you guys about one of our sponsors, and it is our pals and friends and lovely providers over at Routg. Let’s be real, making excuses doesn’t solve anything. It just doesn’t. We’ve all heard them before. It’s just stress, man. I’m tired. Or uh it happens to everyone sometimes. But when it comes to performance, sometimes your body just needs a little extra support. And that’s where Rouette comes in. Rouette.com offers fast acting doctor prescribed treatments for ED designed to help you stop making excuses and start making moves. Rouette makes it makes it uh easy to get started. You just connect with a boardcertified doctor 100% online. No awkward waiting rooms, no inerson appointments, and if prescribed, your treatment ships discreetly and directly to your door. The process is fast, simple, and private. And it’s all handled by real doctors. It’s about confidence, connection, and getting back to the moments that really matter. Visit rugette.com/yak to get 15% off your first order. That’s rugg rug.com/yak. And don’t forget to use our code lockdown mlb so they know we sent you. We’d really appreciate that. Go help us out. Rouette, stop making excuses and start making moves. And just like that everybody, we are back here thriving and vibing on the Locked on Padres’s podcast. The only pod maybe better than the Padres’s themselves. Uh remember to go follow the show wherever you get your podcast from and especially go subscribe to the YouTube. Uh we’ve been getting a lot of subscribers there and we’ve been doing a lot of fun you uh video things there lately and I do some shorts every now and then too. Quick reactions, all that sort of stuff. and my lovely background with my boy Stitch. She’s here and of course baseball stuff, the Tatis bobblehead. You guys want to go check that out. So go see that. But without further ado, let’s get into the bad because folks, spoiler alert, there was a metric crap ton of bad when it comes to to Luis Arise’s season in 2025. And it’s it’s it’s a little disheartening, right? It’s a little disheartening. Why is it disheartening? First, let’s talk about the overall number, wins above replacement, in which he finished just with 0.9 right now. What is wins above replacement? It takes into account everything you do as a player. How many pitches are you seeing? Are you drawing walks? Are you hitting for power? Do you have good defensive abilities? Do you have base running abilities? Are you always available? Were you pretty good in the clutch? It takes it’s the best stat we have that could just be one stat. If you had to look at only one number for how good an overall player was, it’s the closest we’ve got. It’s not the be all and end all, but let me tell you, yeah, even if you don’t like war, that’s fine. But 0.9 is pretty damning, even if you don’t like it. And in terms of the overall lineup for the Padres’s this year, the 0.9 wins up a replacement, that was only ahead of Ramon Lauraniano, Bryce Johnson, Ryan O’Harn, Freddy Fine, and finally Elias Diaz. Right? Those are the only players that produced less that were like frequent enough players in that lineup. And what comes to mind there? Wait, they got Ryan O’Harn of Romeo Lauriano and Freddy Fer only like halfway through the season. Yeah, those guys almost had more weds above replacement by the way than Luis Arise. Um despite the fact that they only played like 70 games. The only player that played a decent amount of games that Arise did better than when it came to fixtures in the lineup was Alias Diaz who played inund uh what is it I’m seeing right now? He played 106 games, but 154 games for Louisa Rise and it’s all those guys were the only ones less. And I promise you, Lauriano, who finished with 0.7, Rhino with 0.6, those guys were finishing if they happened to be Padres’s this whole year with more war. And if you don’t want to look at just their time with the Padres’s, they obviously had more total war uh accumulated on the season, which is not very good, right? and he was just in general, let’s talk about this, worse offensively than last year. And I’m not just talking about batting average, it’s a bunch of different things, but it’s so frustrating, right? Last year, the fact that he still had a higher on base percentage, 346 compared to 327 this year. Batting average 314 last year compared to 292 this year. The reason this is even more frustrating is because I, like many others, really believe that Luis Arise was going to have an awesome bounceback. Not just because he’s a fun player when he’s really on and he’s playing at his peak, but because he’s done it before, right? Like in 2023, he had a 3.4 wins bar replacement. Year before that, 2.7. And at worst, he could deliver the 1.6 that he did in 2021 with the Twins when he hit below 300 as well. That’s right. This is the first time he’s hit below 300. And he still produced more overall value than uh this season and years past, right? Um, and it’s just it’s just so frustrating, especially because heading into the year, you could go look up some of my predictions and the things I was looking forward to this year. Uh, I thought the thumb injury, as so many others did, was a major culprit in why he’d had a a down year, especially from his his all-star 2023 season. That’s the thing that we’re using. You’re telling me this guy was a 109 WRC plus guy and he still hit 314 with a messed up thumb. I was like, “Oh man, he’s going to be all the way back this year.” and instead he was somehow worse. And it’s really frustrating. Right now, what exactly made him a worse hitter this year? There’s a bunch of different things. Number one, he had a negative 14 run value. And we like using run value with pitches, right? And how much they did in the circumstance, right? Were you able to drive in a first and second situation, in a first base situation, right? Taking into the context of the given game when he was thrown uh sinkers specifically minus14 run value and he hit just 167 against them and that’s the reason you saw sinkers were the pitch that he saw the second most to fast balls. Right? 40% of the time it was fast balls, 18.6% of the time it was the sinker. Right? Same thing last year except last year he hit a little bit better against it 307. This year just 167. Right. And even his fast ball by the way. Yes, he hit 333 against fast balls. Not a lot of slug, but his expected stat suggests that he should have been a 284 hitter against fast balls. That’s not as big of a concern, right? But for me, it’s the fact that pitchers were just throwing him some garbage and he went and fell for it, right? And speaking of falling for it, this guy had one of the worst um played approaches that we’d seen uh this season um that I’ve ever seen from a player. Letting strikes just go right down the middle. First pitch strike, no problem. Right? That’s what he was doing this year. And the reason that that is bad is because if it’s too consistent in a given plate appearance, of course, it’s not bad if you let a pitcher um throw first get first pitch strikes, right? That’s not necessarily awful, right? But when it’s consistent and you don’t even show the the like he he loves doing that zombie thing, right, where he just stands there and lets the pitch go in. Who do you think you are, my guy? You aren’t hitting that well this year. And there were times he would let it happen for strike, too. Now, here’s the thing. Well, Jav, he doesn’t strike out. Okay. But here’s the thing. Pitchers know he doesn’t strike out and he also chases and swings at everything a lot. Oh, cool. So, he’s going to give me a free strike and that means I can just throw him garbage for the rest of the at bat because I know he doesn’t walk. That creates a situation in which you are a fundamentally easy batter or easier batter to face as an imposing pitcher. Uh because you’re just like, “Cool, I know that if I have two strikes, throw him something out at EL, right? throw him something that’s in the ground. Yeah, he’ll make contact, but most likely because he’s not monkey duffy and has electric uh, you know, elastic abilities to just reach to everything and swing it all across the park, it’s probably going to be an out. And that was really frustrating to watch this year. Some other things, he had a slight uptick in ground ball rate this year, which his career ground ball rate is good. And it wasn’t even horrible this year at 45.1%. But it is up from the 41 to 42% that he had uh since 2022, right? Less fly balls, 25.2% last year, just 22.5% this year. Um that’s not great, but it just shows you that those type of things have to be very low for a player like Luis Arise to um to succeed more. he needs more line drives because he’s only going to have singles, so he needs to make them count, right? And that’s what happened this year. Um, and also, don’t get me wrong, he’s not a hard hit guy. This isn’t a power guy, but it’s still says a lot that his hard hit rate went down from last year. For those who don’t know, Luis Rise bottom first percentile in hard hit rate last year. But in fairness, that’s always what’s the case, right? He was at the bottom first percentile. He was actually in the third percentile in 2023. In 2022, he was in the seventh percentile. That’s not great. 2024, his hard hit rate 23.7%. Again, very bad. 2025, he had a 16.7% hard hit rate. He’s hitting the ball less hard than ever, which suggests, oh no, this guy’s getting a lot worse, guys. Like, don’t get me wrong, he has been successful despite not hitting the ball too hard. And there are other players that can be successful despite not hitting the ball hard. Steven Quan, Jacob Wilson, uh Xander Bogarts this year. You can be a good player. But when you take into account everything I’ve said so far, that’s a recipe for disaster. It just is. It just is. Um like how do you have a lower hit hard hit rate than you had last year in the years before that? That’s impressive, right? And he also possibly affected the lineup, right? With all of this stuff, with the poor plate discipline, with the lack of walks, everything I’ve talked about so far, he might have affected the rest of the lineup. I mentioned this on the Tatis episode for the player reviews. Go check that out from last week, right? It was a lot of fun. But Tatis hit really poorly against off- speed pitches this year, right? And I’m wondering why why did that happen? Was it because he just wasn’t getting pitches to hit? So, he was forcing things because players uh and specifically pitchers, opposing pitchers just weren’t that scared of him and they knew, hey, Tatis is a walk guy. Like, let’s just walk him and have him on base because we know the next batter at worst is the equivalent of a walk or a single. Not doubles, not extra base hits. It’s okay. we might be getting a a much easier batter here. And that’s what we saw, especially when you take into account that with runners in scoring position from July 1st onwards, which is like three months worth of data, Tatis’s walk rate jumped to 23.5%. So, if you take into account the poor off speed stuff and the fact that he was always walking, that tells me he was not getting pitches to hit because pitchers were not afraid of who was protecting him next in that lineup. And that’s not the fault of Luis Rise. That’s a manager thing. But I’m just saying with his skill sets, with what we were dealing with, that helped uh make this Padres’s lineup, I think, a lot less intimidating off the start. It should have been Jackson Merrell, who was hurt. I get it. But it should have been someone else. And it especially should have been someone else when they acquired Raone Lauraniano and especially Ryan O’Harn um uh at the trade deadline, right? But folks, we’re not even done with all the bad. And we’re going to finish up talking about the bad and talk about my general conclusion about Lucerise in the final segment. But first, I need to talk to you guys about our friends over at the Duelist fandom. That is FanDuel, guys. Of course, we love FanDuel because you know why? They always give our customers, they always give their customers, I should say, not our customers, the best offers possible. Right now, they could bet just $5 and get 300 in bonus bets if you win. That’s right. Pick a bet. whatever it is, parlays, um, player props, money spreads, whatever it is, put down five bucks and if it hits, you’ll unlock $300 in bonus bets to use across the app. So whether it is that you’re a casual fan or love diving into the stats, FanDuel makes the game day experience so much better. So what are you waiting for? Visit fan.com to download the FanDuel app and today you can get started with that big old chunky offer and make your games more exciting. Go check it out. And just like that everybody, we are back here on the Lock on Padres’s podcast. Thriving and vibing despite it all. Talked about the bad of Luis Rise and the good of Luis Rise. And oh wait, no, there’s still some more bad and final points that I want to make about his season. Right, we just mentioned, we ended it with that thing that I mentioned about possibly being really bad lineup protection from Fernantic. I’m not certain of it. I’m just saying his numbers being worse against offsp speed stuff, things that are outside the zone, uh, combined with his walk rate spiking by nearly 10% with runners in scoring position, that tells me that they were like, just walk him, arise, maybe hits into a double play, but at worst it’s going to be a weak ground ball, weak popup, or it’s a walk, it’s it’s a single that’s equivalent of a walk that he’s not going to be able to drive someone in because the ball isn’t hit that hard, right? Even for someone like Tatis when he’s on base, going to be hard for him to score sometimes, right? Next, a lot of people will tell you, “Well, he’s a pest.” Yeah, he is a pest. He can be a pest, absolutely. But if he’s not hitting and getting the 330 batting average, it’s not as good. You know why? Cuz he actually doesn’t see many pitches. He’s a quick atbat. Because he swings at everything, right? In terms of all the qualified hitters this year. In pitches per plate appearance, there were 147 qualified batters. Luis Arise ranked 123rd. So this mythical thing that he’s built up or maybe the media has built up that you’re like h you just know he’s always going to make contact and fight and fight and fight. Well, not really. In fact, Jake Cronworth is a player that he finished eighth or ninth. I think he was top 10 in pitches per played appearance. He was one that was actually a little bit annoying of an at bat because he could also draw walks too, right? Luis Arise, he just isn’t that. He’s not patient enough. So having that, why is a player that doesn’t see nearly any pitches and swings at everything and doesn’t hit hard, why is he this high in the lineup, right? If you’re not going to see that many pitches, you better be doing a lot with the few pitches that you do see. And he doesn’t do that. So why was he batting number two? Well, not his fault, but again, something we got to bring up with Mike Schill. Um, he also still has a horrible walk rate. Everybody knows this. He doesn’t walk enough. Uh, and it’s been going down for a lot of years now. Sure, he had a little bit better of a walk rate than last year, but 2021 he had a um 9% walk rate, which was excellent. Part of the reason why he had a better season. 2022 8.3. 2023 5.7. Not very good, but the fact that he’d ever struck out, he was just hitting the ball all over the place. He made up for it. Then last year, 3.6% and this year 5%. That’s not a good trend. Combined with the hard hit rate, very, very bad trends for our guy Luis Arise. And also defensively, he just doesn’t. If Luis Arise was an excellent defender, this guy would be an all-star. This guy would be a great player that I’d want to retain because all right, if he’s still not hitting, whatever, at least he can be a pretty good defensive player, right? No, he’s actually one of the worst. He had three defensive runs saved at first base this year, but negative six outs above average, right? Like in terms of on average where the ball was hit, how many players turned that into an out, right? So yeah, defensive run save was positive, which tells you he had a couple of good moments of maybe throwing out runners or maybe um you know, making some nice uh grabs actually with his with his glove in terms of scoops or reaching for the ball. Although part of that was because of his short stature. He just was clearly not supposed to be a first baseman. But you know why they did that? Because he’s a bad defensive player. In total at second base, he also produced negative -2 defensive run saves and -2 outs above average. in total negative n outs above average which ranked in the fourth percentile of all major league batters and you can’t say that this was just uh he struggled at first because he’s not used to it. Well, he’s also bad at second not just this year for the times that he played second but historically as well. You want to go even further? If you want to use fan graphs, their rating that they have, defensive rating, not something that I usually use because it’s just a stat that’s there is harder to track or whatever, but if I want to use it, he was the eighth worst player in Major League Baseball when it came to that number defensive rating. Negative 12th defensive rating this year. Only Pete Alonzo, Juan Sto, Nick Castanos, Helot Ramos, Vinnie Pascotito, Nathaniel Lo, and Tiascar Hernandez were worse. And what’s one common thing that all those players have? They hit for power. they can make up for it. First base is poor defenders, right? But they hit for a lot of power. Lord knows we know what Wat is capable of, right? So that’s really frustrating to see. And also the last thing, no show in the playoffs, hit 187. Not great. And and and also during the regular season, right, he had a 123 WRC plus in high leverage situations. So like the games where it’s late in the game, you need the hit, he was pretty good. But in general with driving in runs, with runners in scoring position, just a 96 WRC plus, 4% worse than your average major league batter, right? I was hoping that maybe he’d redeem himself and be like, “Oh man, hey, sometimes guys that could just make contact with the ball, they could get a little bit lucky, but that skill set can be really good in the playoffs because you just might have a heck of a run.” That’s one of the reasons that Eric Hosmer had such a legendary playoffs because he was good at just hitting getting the ball in play, right? and Luis Arise just didn’t do that. And that’s the second year in a row that he’s been bad in the postseason. So again, unless you literally just look at batting average, Luis Arise was an abject failure uh this year, especially when you take into account, although not his fault, that he was at the top of this order. If you put him bottom of the order, maybe he’s better. In fact, I know that he’s probably better if he was lower in the batting lineup because in total in his career, 119 WRC plus batting first, 106 batting second. That is the second worst position in his career that he’s batted in. The only one worse is batting eighth where he has an 89 WRC plus, I’m sorry, third worst, 102 WRC plus when he’s batting ninth. 137 batting third, 111 batting fourth, and 150 batting fifth. That makes me wonder, okay, you’re not going to have him replace Tatis first. Okay, you’re you don’t want to have, you know, you should have Jackson batting second. Okay, you don’t want to take Jackson or Manny Machado or Gavin Sheets out of that third spot, right? And fourth spot usually is belonging to Manny, the cleanup hitter. So why aren’t you putting him right after Manny, right? They have to deal with Manny. Now there’s a guy that just might get the things rolling again. You have Tatis and Arise. Um I’m sorry. You have Merryill who maybe gets on base or Bogarts gets on base. Just a bunch of on base guys. Laurana O’Harn. Why was he batting there? Not his fault though, right? But even still, that’s what made him so bad. He was a player that should have done more for a team that was a contender, right? And in conclusion, I look, I don’t hate Luis Arise. He’s a really fun player. I talked about that in the first segment. And I actually really do think that there is upside still here. He’s not super old, right? He’s 29. There’s a world in which it because of such a bad season, right? He’s probably not going to get paid that much because major league teams are going to look at everything that I told you. the walk rate not getting better, the hard hit rate getting even worse, his overall value getting worse this last year, right? All that sort of stuff, the pitches per played appearance, uh teams wanting to just walk Tatis consistently and not throw him anything good because they’re not scared of you. And because of the bad defensive value, and he’s really, really slow, too, by the way, in terms of sprint speed, he ranked in the 25th percentile, right? So, I look at that and say, “Oh, man. Uh, he’s not going to get paid that much.” But I actually think that that might be good. If there’s a team out there that just needs a solid piece to put in the fifth spot, sixth spot, bottom of the order to just like reignite the bottom half of the lineup, there are worse bets to make than a player like Luis Arise. It could be like a DJ LaMu situation when he was a 300 hitter with the Rockies and then he signed elsewhere for two years, 20 million, and he had a couple good years with the Yankees. I’m not saying he’s going to be a fringe top 10 MVP guy the way that um Lamehei was when he first signed with the Yankees, but I do think that there could be value there. But he cannot be back on this Padres’s team next year. He cannot certainly bat second next year. If the Padres’s say, “You know what guys, we have nobody. Let’s bring a guy who at one point was a three- win player, right? A 2.7 win player or a 1.6 six- win player and just hope that maybe he can turn it around and maybe you pay him one year 14 million, two years 20 million. I don’t know. That’s not the worst thing I’ve heard in the world. But if you’re looking for a player to really be an impact guy, an allstar caliber player or everybody keeps declaring is is Tony Gwyn, oh, he’s the batting champ. This just isn’t it. And the trends that I’ve seen suggest that even with all that considered, with the lower money he’s probably going to get, I still don’t know if I take this chance. He’s more of a guy that if you have nothing to lose, if you’re a Rocky’s, if you’re a, you know, a Cardinals, if you’re a maybe even a Reds or a Marlins, maybe not Marlins, I don’t want to bring it back, but you get my point. If you’re a team that’s a contender, maybe you don’t want to do this. Instead, you go out and sign some decent players that you at least think uh can give you, you know, more than one window of replacement, especially for as many games as they’ve been playing. And it’s frustrating, man. Again, uh I’ve talked about it all on today’s show, and I hope you’ve enjoyed it, but this is why I struggle with the people who defend Luis Arise still um and think that he’s so much better when there’s literally nothing in terms of this year. I looked everywhere that you can find that says actually he was very good, right? And some of the comments that I get on this channel, well, you have to look at productive plate appearances. You can’t just work at RBI’s and and average. You have to look at, you know, or you can’t just look at average and is on base. You got to look at runs scored. It’s like, yeah, batting averages on base has to do with that. So, it’s just there’s no way to twist it. Luis Rise is a bad player and very well could be if he’s continued to be revered as the three-time batting champ, which is like the all reliable for excuses, right? Then yes, he is extraordinarily overrated. If you view him as a high upside bottom of the order guy who could occasionally be awesome and really fun to watch, then not overrated. But if you view him as the former, absolutely. And you got to start learning more about how baseball works. At least in my opinion. And that about does it for today’s edition of the Locked On Padres’s podcast. The only pod that may be better than the Padres’s themselves. Remember to subscribe to the podcast, where you get your podcast from. Follow it on YouTube. Locked on Padres’s on YouTube. Uh Monday’s show we’re going to be doing the mailbag. Send me all of your questions and comments and responses to the player reviews to the manager stuff. And I promise you when the manager gets announced, you will hear about it on this podcast and a whole bunch of other fun stuff. Next player review. Do we have to talk about the king? Do we have to talk about him? Do we have to talk about the Cronin worth? Are we Cronin worthy? Bunch of other guys in the pipeline and in the works, guys. But until that next time, stay safe and of course stay faithful, my fire faithful homies, take care.

Luis Arráez: Generational contact hitter or overrated asset for the San Diego Padres? Javier Reyes breaks down the controversial infielder’s 2025 season performance.

Javi analyzes Arráez’s exceptional batting average prowess and contact skills, while critically examining his plate discipline and defensive shortcomings. Reyes also explores how Arráez’s presence could have affected the Padres’ lineup, particularly Fernando Tatis Jr.’s production, and also weighs in on Arráez’s future prospects and potential value in free agency. Go Padres.

0:00 Intro: Luis Arráez 2025 season review
5:06 Arráez’s positives: Contact skills and availability
10:11 Why Arraez was such a mess
15:47 Negative lineup impact
21:25 Defensive struggles and free agency outlook

Follow on Twitter: https://mobile.twitter.com/Javiipeno
Follow on BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/javiipeno.bsky.social
Follow on Tik Tok: https://www.tiktok.com/@javioos

Follow & Subscribe on all Podcast platforms…
🎧 https://lockedonpodcasts.com/podcasts/locked-on-padres/

Locked On MLB League-Wide: Every Team, Prospects & More
🎧 https://lockedonpodcasts.com/leagues/mlb/

Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors!

PrizePicks
Download the PrizePicks app today and use code LOCKEDONMLB to get $50 in lineups after you play your first $5 lineup.PrizePicks — Run Your Game.Click Link Here: https://prizepicks.onelink.me/LME0/LOCKEDONMLB

Monarch Money
Take control of your finances with Monarch Money. Use code LOCKEDONMLB at https://monarchmoney.com/lockedonmlb for 50% off your first year.

Gametime
Download the Gametime app, create an account, and use code LOCKEDONMLB for $20 off your first purchase. Terms apply. Download Gametime today. What time is it? Gametime.

FanDuel
Today’s episode is brought to you by FanDuel. Football season is around the corner, visit the FanDuel App today and start planning your futures bets now.

FANDUEL DISCLAIMER: 21+ in select states. First online real money wager only. Bonus issued as nonwithdrawable free bets that expires in 14 days. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Gambling Problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit FanDuel.com/RG (CO, IA, MD, MI, NJ, PA, IL, VA, WV), 1-800-NEXT-STEP or text NEXTSTEP to 53342 (AZ), 1-888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chat (CT), 1-800-9-WITH-IT (IN), 1-800-522-4700 (WY, KS) or visit ksgamblinghelp.com (KS), 1-877-770-STOP (LA), 1-877-8-HOPENY or text HOPENY (467369) (NY), TN REDLINE 1-800-889-9789 (TN)

#Padres #SanDiegoPadres #MLB

Leave a Reply