Tag Archives: Luis Arraez

The offseason: Ending with bangs? Whimpers?

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Jacob Wilson

Jacob Wilson, secured as an Athletic for seven seasons and $70 million . . .

I confess. I’m not sure whether the January portion of the Hot Stove League offseason ended with more bangs than whimpers. I’m willing to wager that not too many others are, either. So, here’s some news as January’s end arrived . . .

Sale? What Sale? Dept. — It’s been speculated often enough that Padres general manager A.J. Preller is somewhat hamstrung making offseason moves with the team’s pending sale and its attendant Seidler family squabbling. Preller would like us to know that such speculation is slightly exaggerated.

“You get to this point, and obviously you get the opportunity to hopefully get some players that are motivated, that want to be here, and get some deals that we feel like line up for us from a price standpoint and what we get in the player,” he told the Padres FanFest. “Hopefully we’re going to look to add some guys here in the next couple of weeks that help us a lot.”

In other words, Preller hopes to make some moves this month. Padres fans can only reply, “We hope!” They may temper that with their fingers crossed now that Luis Arraez signed a single-season deal with the Giants, where his wish to play second base full time is likely to come true for now.

Jacob’s Ladder Dept. — The ladder goes further up with the Las Vegas Athletics of Oakland via Sacramento. The A’s and their All-Star shortstop Jacob Wilson have agreed on a seven-year, $70 million contract with a team option for an eighth season, according to ESPN’s Jeff Passan.

“With exceptional bat-to-ball skills, Wilson stamped himself as a likely future batting champion last season and spent much of the year atop the AL batting average leaderboard,” Passan wrote. “His power output surprised evaluators, who were concerned Wilson’s desire for contact — he struck out just 39 times in 523 plate appearances last year — would limit his home runs.”

The Wilson deal means the A’s have 2025 Rookie of the Year Nick Kurtz, Wilson, designated hitter Brent Rooker, and outfielders Tyler Soderstrom and Lawrence Butler locked down until at least 2030, according to Passan. Wilson and Soderstrom will be under team control through 2033, Butler through 2022, and Rooker through 2030, he added.

Translation: the somewhat loaded offense the A’s have been building without big fanfare is aimed squarely at making sure the A’s have more than just their presence, their uniforms, and a garish-on-the-outside ballpark to offer Las Vegas when they finally move there in 2028. If only the maneuverings making the move possible were done a) on the square; and, b) on owner John Fisher’s entire own dollars and not too many of those of Nevada taxpayers, without c) screwing Oakland in the bargain.

Insurance Running Dept. — You may or may not have noticed, but a rising number of major league stars aren’t going to be playing in the World Baseball Classic after all. That’s because MLB’s chief insurer is taking a tougher line on insuring players for the international tournament. So much so that Puerto Rico is considering pulling out of the tournament . . . because as many as ten of their team, including Mets superstar shortstop Francisco Lindor, are denied coverage.

The concern is comprehensible. The affected players have incurred injuries either in the most recent seasons or in the WBC itself. Perhaps the most notorious was relief pitcher Edwin Díaz, who missed the entire 2023 major league season after he was injured during a WBC celebration in that year’s tournament. The Athletic says WBC injuries to Díaz and Astros star Jose Altuve that year prompted MLB’s insurers to toughen up approval for play outside MLB.

Aside from Altuve and Lindor, Puerto Rico’s non-cleared players also include Astros third baseman Carlos Correa, Blue Jays pitcher José Berríos, and Twins catcher Victor Caratini. Puerto Rico’s team operations manager Joey Sola told The Athletic they’d have to withdraw entirely if they can’t find substitutes.

Pohlaxed Dept. — The departure of Twins general manager Derek Falvey disturbed a good many people who watch the Twins closely — except for Falvey himself. The Athletic‘s Aaron Gleeman reported this weekend that, if anything, Falvey now seemed like a man with tons of weight removed from his head.

“It’s been a challenge at times,” Falvey told Gleeman. “I’d be lying to say anything else. Everyone is going to have different limitations or challenges they have to navigate through. I do think for us over the course of certainly the last 16 or 18 months, those were ratcheted up.” Falvey seems to have a future as an understatement expert.

“Those” included the Polhads dropping the Twins payroll by $30 million in 2024 and by another $30 million this offseason, the non-reward for Falvey taking a $165 million 2023 payroll and shepherded it to the American League Central title and the end of the team’s two-decade-long postseason winless streak. Gleeman said the Twins’ projected $100 million 2026 payroll “left Falvey with few appealing options to improve a 92-loss team that needs all kinds of help following last year’s trade-deadline fire sale and second-half ineptitude.”

Good luck with all that. As Gleeman pointed out, the Twins’ owning family “pushed out Joe Pohlad as the executive chair in December, replacing him with older brother Tom Pohlad, who has since repeatedly made it clear he expects the Twins to be competitive this season without actually giving the front office the resources to add impact talent.”

That’s something along the line of American Airlines demanding its pilots fly Dreamliner jets across the Atlantic with their fuel tanks an eighth full.

There is Good News This Morning Dept. — It’s only seven days before pitchers and catchers begin reporting for spring training. They’ll be almost as happy to escape this winter’s cruel lash across the upper and eastward regions of this nation as baseball fans will be to welcome them back.

The 20th century New York Times writer/outdoorsman Hal Borland once observed, “No winter lasts forever; no spring skips its turn.” Now hear this, Mr. Borland, serene in your perch in the Elysian Fields: For those nine words alone, the reading of which baseball fans are grateful beyond expression, you should have been awarded the Pulitzer Prize.

First published in slightly different form at Sports Central.

No, it wasn’t Baldelli’s fault

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Luis Arraez

This off-balanced throw from third by Luis Arraez finished what Travis Blankenhorn’s bobble at second started for the Twins Wednesday. Neither was the manager’s fault.

Sometimes you can believe to your soul that second-guessing is in a dead heat with cheating as baseball’s oldest profession. Twins manager Rocco Baldelli may be re-learning the hard way since Wednesday’s 13-12 loss against the Athletics.

All Baldelli did was make one smart move in the top of a tenth inning the Twins shouldn’t have had to play in the first place . . . and watch in horror with every Twin fan in creation when it blew up in his face in the bottom of the tenth. Through absolutely no fault of his own.

Baldelli inserted a speedy young pinch runner, Travis Blankenhorn, for his slower free half inning-opening cookie Josh Donaldson. He found himself with a swift and fresh two-run lead after Byron Buxton, who may yet prove the Twins’ answer to Mike Trout, hit a two-run homer to return the Twins a two-run lead.

With Donaldson out of the game Baldelli shifted his second base incumbent Luis Arraez to third and inserted Blankenhorn at second. Bottom of the tenth: the pillows stuffed with A’s after Twins reliever Alex Colome walked veteran Elvis Andrus to load them up after he opened the inning with two outs and nobody on.

Then A’s left fielder Mark Canha whacked a none-too-sharp grounder right to Blankenhorn. And Blankenhorn—with double play obviously on his mind—lost his grip on the ball as he made a right-arm motion to throw without the ball secure in hand, the ball hitting the ground and A’s inning-opening free cookie Matt Chapman coming home.

And then Arraez double-clutched before throwing Ramon Laureano’s grounder with his right leg slightly unbalanced. The throw sailed wide enough behind first base to pass a train through the space, but this time the only things passing through were Andrus and pinch-runner Tony Kemp scoring the tying and winning runs.

The A’s ought to send Colome roses for really enabling the sweep that shouldn’t have been. Twin Territory ought to knock it off with hanging the goat horns on Baldelli’s none-too-bald head.

This game had no business getting to the extra innings in the first place. Not until Colome opened the bottom of the ninth by hitting Laureano with a pitch, continued by surrendering a one-out base hit to Matt Olson roomy enough for Laureano to take third, and finished by surrendering a game-tying sacrifice fly to Chapman. Picking Olson off for the side with Stephen Piscotty at the plate didn’t quite atone for Colome’s original sin.

“It’s just baseball and it’s hard to understand,” said Laureano, taking the simpler view. “We were still loose and having fun, so we knew we would win.”

“The way the first two games went and then neither team could hold either down,” said A’s manager Bob Melvin after putting his gift an an eleven-game A’s winning streak safely in the bank, “it was almost like it was going to go down to the last at-bat regardless. And then you know what? You put a ball in play. At that point in time it’s not about walks and strikeouts and all that. Put it in play and something good can happen.”

That’s a matter of opinion, of course. Put a ball in play and something terrible can happen, too. If you’re an A’s fan, something wonderful happened. If you’re a Twins fan, you might want to think back to why the game shouldn’t have gotten to the extras in the first place.

For Baldelli to want some extra speed on the bases to open the top of the tenth wasn’t even close to the dumbest baseball move you’ll see. Blankenhorn had an .844 stolen base percentage in the minors. He was also a rangy enough second baseman who projected as a potential plus defender particularly adept at turning double plays.

You want to blame Baldelli for a rookie mistake, feel free. But a rookie mistake is just what Blankenhorn committed on the Canha grounder. A guy who turned 120 double plays in the minors should have remembered not to count his double plays before he turns them.

Arraez hasn’t played half the Show games at third that he’s played at second, and he isn’t the rangiest man on the planet at either position. But what he reaches or comes right to him, he handles under normal circumstances. Over three Show seasons Arraez entered Wednesday’s game with a measly four errors.

“In extra innings, if you don’t find a way to put a run on the board, you’re going to end up losing a lot of those games,” Baldelli told reporters after the game. “Doing everything possible to put that first run on the board is, I think, instrumental to finding ways to win those games.”

He did just what he thought possible opening the tenth and got immediate return when Buxton turned on Lou Trivino’s meatball up and drove it about seven rows into the high left center field seats.

And that was after Buxton spent the earlier portion of his evening going 2-for-5 with a double and taking an Olympics-like dive to spear Olson’s long sinking liner for the side, in the bottom of the sixth, preserving what was then a 10-9 Twins lead. Not to mention Nelson Cruz’s two-bomb night.

The Twins’ Wednesday starting pitcher, Kenta Maeda, the former Dodger, blamed himself for the disaster, after surrendering seven runs (three in the second, four in the third) to tie his career worst. “I could not set the tone,” he mourned. “If I had done that, we would have gotten that W.”

Yet the Twins hung up three-spots in the third, fifth, and sixth, after Donaldson himself hit A’s starter Frankie Montas’s first pitch over the left field corner fence in the top of the first.  That’d teach him.

“It’s been a hell of a trip, and not in a good way,” Baldelli said of the Twins’ now-concluded road trip, which involved postponements against the Angels due to COVID concerns followed by a loss to those Angels and now three straight losses to the A’s.

“Today was a game where we’re finding ways to not win games, even games that we should be winning,” he told the postgame questioners. “What we saw today is something we haven’t seen a ton from our group, and I stand in the front of it and take responsibility for all of it. It was a very difficult day.”

It wouldn’t have been that difficult if his man on the mound held fort in the ninth and his tenth-inning smarts weren’t rendered dumb by an anxious rook and an off-balance leg at third. Those mistakes can make Casey Stengel resemble Clyde Crashcup.