Marlins trade Luis Arraez to Padres
The Miami Marlins have traded second baseman Luis Arraez to the San Diego Padres in exchange for three prospects, ESPN MLB insider Jeff Passan was the first to report Friday.
Marlins reporter Craig Mish of MLB.com first reported that the four players heading back are reliever Woo-Suk Go, outfielder prospects Jakob Marsee and Dillon Head plus utility prospect Nathan Martorella.
None of them are top-100 prospects, according to MLB Pipeline. In fact, the three aforementioned prospects rank No. 9, 6 and 13 in the Padres’ system, respectively. The Padres have a good farm system, but not nabbing one of their top-5 doesn’t feel like great process three months ahead of the trade deadline after they traded Pablo Lopez for Arraez over 15 months ago.
Arraez, 27, is the two-time reigning batting champion, doing it with the Minnesota Twins in 2022 and Marlins in 2023. Over those two seasons, he slashed a combined .335/.384/.445 with 18 home runs, 65 additional extra-base hits (61 doubles, four triples), 118 RBIs and seven stolen bases.
He hasn’t been as good at the dish through 33 games in 2024, but he’s still been an above-average bat who’s one of baseball’s best contact hitters. He’s slashing .299/.347/.372 (.719 OPS; 105 OPS+) with eight doubles, one triple and five RBIs.
The Marlins started 2024 losing their first nine games and 12 of their first 14. They are 9-24 and eight games out of fourth place in the NL East, owning the second-worst run differential (minus-59) in the NL and third-worst in MLB.
This trade comes just days after first-year Marlins general manager Peter Bendix said he was “confident” that the team would improve in the short-term, despite their disastrous record.
“We have the guys to make that happen,” he said. “But I knew when taking this job that to get the organization where I want it to be is going to take more than one year, regardless of what happens this year.
We’re always exploring ways that we can improve the roster in the short term and long term. And right now, when you have the record that we have, it’s certainly a little more focused on what we can do in the short term and making sure that — at the same time — we’re understanding that we don’t want to panic, that a lot of these guys have track records of performance that we believe in, and that we know that they’re working hard.”
If we know one thing about the Padres, we know how much they’ve liked to stack their middle infield depth. They did that again by acquiring Arraez. Both Xander Bogaerts and Ha-Seong Kim have gotten off to slow starts offensively, and Arraez’s acquisition provides better balance and depth to the lineup.
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This is a breaking news story. Stay tuned for updates.
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