{"id":551249,"date":"2026-02-02T23:57:14","date_gmt":"2026-02-02T23:57:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/551249\/"},"modified":"2026-02-02T23:57:14","modified_gmt":"2026-02-02T23:57:14","slug":"giants-harrison-bader-defends-luis-arraez-from-criticism-nbc-sports-bay-area-california","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/551249\/","title":{"rendered":"Giants\u2019 Harrison Bader defends Luis Arr\u00e1ez from criticism \u2013 NBC Sports Bay Area & California"},"content":{"rendered":"

The\u00a0Giants reportedly agreeing to a contract with\u00a0Luis\u00a0Arr\u00e1ez<\/a>\u00a0has\u00a0stirred debate in the San Francisco and baseball fandom.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Arr\u00e1ez is excellent at hitting for average but falls flat in other\u00a0statistical\u00a0areas<\/a>\u00a0such as\u00a0wRC+, walks drawn, and slugging.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But\u00a0fellow Giants free-agent acquisition Harrison Bader staunchly defended\u00a0Arr\u00e1ez\u00a0in an interview with\u00a0KNBR 680’s \u201cMurph & Markus<\/a>” on Monday. <\/p>\n

\u201cI think the people who make decisions in the front office understand the value of a player as talented as Luis\u00a0Arr\u00e1ez,\u201d Bader explained. \u201cI think that there are always going to be conversations about expected stats and whatnot — and those are all well and good for Twitter conversations — but at the end of the day what matters most is the lineup you put out there, advancing 90 feet at a time, getting as many hits as possible, getting on base, all these things.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Bader presents an outlook that brings baseball back to reality. Stats make for good-looking graphics and social media arguments, but\u00a0Bader insists that the impact\u00a0that Arr\u00e1ez can provide goes\u00a0beyond that.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cHe’s stacked three batting titles on top of that; I think that really does speak for itself,\u201d Bader noted. \u201cI’ve\u00a0seen him work up close.\u00a0I’ve\u00a0watched\u00a0him\u00a0work. I’ve studied how he\u00a0works\u00a0and I know a lot of his coaches and everything, and all of that speaks for itself.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u00a0don’t\u00a0want to go as far as\u00a0to criticize\u00a0or be rude to anybody, but all I can tell you is that\u00a0he’s\u00a0just an extremely gifted hitter. What he does is something that\u00a0really good\u00a0major leaguers\u00a0can’t\u00a0do.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

From 2022 to 2024,\u00a0Arr\u00e1ez\u00a0won three consecutive batting titles and led\u00a0all of\u00a0MLB in batting average in 2023.\u00a0Last season, he led the National League in hits and\u00a0sacrifice\u00a0hits.\u00a0He struck out just 21 times, the lowest total among qualified hitters across baseball.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It plays into president of baseball operations Buster Posey\u2019s philosophy: put the ball in play and put the\u00a0onus\u00a0on the defense.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Bader also should provide some improved consistency for the Giants. His\u00a0.277 batting average would have ranked second-best on the team last season behind Dominic Smith (.284), who played in 83 fewer games than Bader.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Bader looks forward to teaming up with another skilled hitter.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI’m happy that we acquired him, and I’m excited to learn from him…\u201d Bader said, \u201c…I have tremendous respect for him, and I’m looking forward to having him be a teammate of mine for sure.\u201d<\/p>\n

Download and follow the Giants Talk Podcast<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The\u00a0Giants reportedly agreeing to a contract with\u00a0Luis\u00a0Arr\u00e1ez\u00a0has\u00a0stirred debate in the San Francisco and baseball fandom.\u00a0 Arr\u00e1ez is excellent…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":551250,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2408],"tags":[5,162,365,85,4,378,66,4343,4340,4344,4341,4342],"class_list":{"0":"post-551249","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-francisco-giants","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-giants","10":"tag-harrison-bader","11":"tag-luis-arraez","12":"tag-mlb","13":"tag-san-francisco","14":"tag-san-francisco-giants","15":"tag-sanfrancisco","16":"tag-sanfranciscogiants","17":"tag-sf","18":"tag-sf-giants","19":"tag-sfgiants"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/551249","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=551249"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/551249\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/551250"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=551249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=551249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=551249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}