Luis Arraez is straight out of a time machine.

No one in modern baseball hits like this crouching, lefty, contact wizard that the San Francisco Giants signed on Saturday night for a one-year contract worth $12 million to be their starting second baseman.

There are so many ways to encapsulate the greatness of Arraez that is also miscast in what MLB looks like in 2026. Here are a few of them.

Luis Arraez, MLB’s perfect misfit3-time batting champion

Maybe nothing shows Arraez’s plight more than this: He has won three batting championships, for three different teams.

The Twins, Marlins and Padres have all seen how pure of a hitter Arraez is, and they’ve all now moved on from him.

In a bygone era, a batting champion would be a hero. A guy who won three batting titles? Untouchable.

Now, Arraez has moved again, and he’s got a legitimate chance to be a batting champion for a fourth different team.

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Belongs in the ’20s – the 1920s

Baseball Reference assigns similarity scores to players based on their statistical overlaps with others throughout MLB history.

The most similar player to Arraez through his age-28 season? Jo-Jo Moore, who was born in 1908 and played for the New York Giants in the 1930s.

Moore, like Arraez, walked more than he struck out, but did neither very often.

In those days, Moore’s contact style didn’t make him a batting champion, though. There were legendary hitters back then hitting for gargantuan averages against pitching that was nothing like today’s arms.

Moore did make six All-Star teams and win the 1933 World Series.

Other luminaries in Arraez’s similarity score top-10? Taffy Wright (born 1911), Lew Fonseca (born 1899) and Homer Summa (born 1898).

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Baseball as art

Modern baseball is all numbers.

Arraez is art.

The way he crouches, and gets his bat to any pitch, is not dissimilar to Rod Carew or Tony Gwynn. Those are two of the all-time great hitters. No one in modern baseball is putting Arraez in that category.

But there’s something so simple and beautiful about watching Arraez hit. He’s going to put the ball in play. He’s going to hit it where it’s pitched. To the baseball purist, Arraez isn’t a misfit at all.

Arraez is a window into a world when baseball was still widely known as America’s Pastime. In 2026, he will bring to the Bay Area a game almost as if a fossil was brought back to life. There is no one like Arraez anymore.

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