For a front office that had been preaching pitching and defense, this was a move in the exact opposite direction. Arraez’s knack for making contact must have been too good for Buster Posey to pass up. Let’s take a quick look at how the new second baseman fits into the current Giants picture.
The Perfect Puzzle Piece?
While Luis Arraez isn’t the well-rounded hitter most executives look for, he’s the best in the business when it comes to poking singles and avoiding strikeouts. It may not be the flashiest brand of baseball, but it’s one we know Posey and the Giants front office like.
Through the current regime’s first year of running the organization, the majority of their non-big league acquisitions have been hit-first guys. Whether it was in the draft or at the trade deadline, a surplus of prospects coming into the system have excelled at hitting for average.
Similarly, that’s exactly where Arraez shines. In 2025, the 28-year-old led the National League in hits with 181 despite having his worst year in recent memory. Since the start of 2022, Arraez leads all qualified hitters with 757 hits and a .318 batting average.
His 2023 season stands out as his most productive; he held a 131 wRC+, hit .354, launched 10 home runs, and accumulated 3.4 fWAR. If the Giants get anything close to that from Arraez, the $12 million price point will look like a bargain.
Unfortunately, he doesn’t provide anything else offensively, but it really doesn’t matter in this Giants lineup. For the first time in years, there’ll be no lack of slug on Opening Day in San Francisco, with a core of Rafael Devers, Willy Adames, and Matt Chapman and a supporting cast including Heliot Ramos and top power-hitting prospect Bryce Eldridge.
As long as Arraez can get on base and set the table for those guys while driving in a run here and there, he’ll be a welcome addition in San Francisco. He joins a group that ranked 25th in baseball when it came to batting average last season, with a .235 clip.
It may not be as big a problem, but the Giants were also in the bottom half of the league in terms of strikeouts with a rate of 22.7%. On the flip side, Arraez is coming off a year with a career-low 3.1% strikeout rate. He may not offer a variety of talents at the plate, but what he excels in is exactly what San Francisco needed.