Houston Astros Jose Altuve (27) celebrates his home run with Yordan Alvarez (44) a call that was umpire reviewed for possible fan interference but upheld during the third inning of an MLB baseball game at Minute Maid Park on Tuesday, Sept. 6, 2022 in Houston.
Here’s how Arraez has gone on his historic no-strikeout streak.
What Luis Arraez is doing should be impossible in baseball today.
He has now gone over a full calendar month without striking out. Arraez’s last strikeout was on Aug. 10. That’s 28 games ago. He has taken 124 plate appearances since then, and seen 445 pitches. Zero have yielded a K.
“Everybody hates strikeouts,” the Padres star summed it up recently. “But especially me.”
Longest plate-appearance streaks without a strikeout (since start of expansion era in 1961):
• Dave Cash, 223 (1976 Phillies)
• Nellie Fox, 185 (1962 White Sox)
• Bill Buckner, 184 (1972 Dodgers)
• Greg Gross, 173 (1979-80 Phillies)
• Tony Gwynn, 170 (1995 Padres)
Arraez’s hatred of the K is fueling a historic stretch that would seem to belong in any era of MLB history but this one, when pitchers are the nastiest and strikeouts are the highest that they’ve ever been. Arraez is the unicorn. He’s become impossible to strike out.
Entering Friday’s series opener against the Giants, Arraez has played his last 27 games completely strikeout-free. Let’s break down exactly what he’s been doing in those games. (He had four extra plate appearances on Aug. 10 after his last strikeout, but so we can compare him to the rest of the league, we’ll start with the first clean game on Aug. 11.)
Arraez has seen 116 two-strike pitches during this stretch. Not a single one has become Strike 3. He has swung at 91 of those two-strike pitches. He hasn’t missed once.
We can dive even deeper into those results. Here are five keys to Arraez’s strikeout-less streak.
1) He’ll see a strike … but then he jumps on you
You can get Strike 1 on Arraez, but that’s all part of his plan. It’s a lot harder to get Strike 2 to even put Arraez into a potential strikeout situation.
As MLB.com Padres reporter AJ Cassavell pointed out this week, Arraez actually isn’t a big first-pitch swinger. During these 27 games without a K, he’s taken the first pitch 83% of the time, making him one of the most patient first-pitch hitters in baseball over that stretch.
But it’s only for one pitch — and it’s by design. As Arraez explains it, he wants to see what a pitcher has. Then he lets it rip. After the first pitch, Arraez gets a lot more aggressive, and once he’s swinging, his bat control is so good that he’s probably putting the ball in play.
Here’s a good example from a few days ago: Arraez calmly took a first-pitch 97 mph fastball from George Kirby for a called strike on the inside edge of the plate … but when Kirby came after him again with another 97 mph fastball on the next pitch, and it leaked out over the plate, Arraez jumped on it and smacked a line-drive base hit.
Over the last month, even with all those first-pitch takes, 57% of Arraez’s plate appearances have been decided before two strikes, a top-10 mark in the Majors among hitters who’ve batted at least 100 times. Even more reflective of his approach to hitting: 40% of Arraez’s plate appearances have been decided with one strike specifically — after that first take but before he reaches a strikeout count — tied with Nico Hoerner for the highest mark of any hitter.
But even though he’s been in strikeout situations at one of the lowest frequencies in the league, that’s still nearly half of Arraez’s plate appearances that have gone to two strikes. And that’s where his top-of-the-class contact ability really shines.
2) He redefines “protecting the plate”
You can usually get Strike 1 on Arraez. You can sometimes get Strike 2. You can never get Strike 3.
Arraez in two-strike counts is like no hitter in baseball. He protects everything
