Luis Arráez Joins Giants: Can Better Swing Decisions Bring Back His Batting Title Form?
The San Francisco Giants are taking a calculated swing of their own this offseason, reportedly inking three-time batting champ Luis Arráez to a one-year deal. On paper, it’s a low-risk move with the potential for high reward-especially if the Giants can help Arráez rediscover the version of himself that once terrorized pitchers with surgical precision at the plate.
Let’s be clear: Arráez is still one of the most gifted contact hitters in baseball. But the version we’ve seen over the past couple of seasons hasn’t quite looked like the guy who won batting titles and turned at-bats into clinics in bat control. His numbers have dipped, and the culprit isn’t hard to find-it’s not about strength or speed, it’s about swing decisions.
A Throwback Hitter in a Power-Driven League
Arráez isn’t built like your typical modern slugger. He doesn’t light up Statcast leaderboards with exit velocity or barrel rate.
In fact, his bat speed and hard-hit metrics consistently rank near the bottom of the league. But that’s never been his game.
He’s a throwback-an artist with the bat who thrives on feel, timing, and elite hand-eye coordination.
When he’s right, Arráez is a line-drive machine, peppering all fields with base hits and rarely striking out. But lately, the quality of those line drives has slipped.
His raw power-already limited-has taken another step back. And that’s showing up in the numbers.
In 2025, he posted a .289 BABIP-the lowest of his career. For a hitter like Arráez, who relies so much on placement and contact quality, that’s a red flag.
In the past, a dip like that might’ve been chalked up to bad luck. But this time, it’s more than that.
He simply wasn’t squaring up the ball the way he used to.
The Swing Decision Dilemma
The heart of the issue? Swing decisions.
Arráez has always made his living by staying in the strike zone and punishing hittable pitches. But over the past two seasons, his approach has drifted. In 2025, his chase rate climbed to 34.1%-a significant jump from earlier in his career when he consistently posted above-average discipline numbers.
Now, chasing pitches isn’t uncommon. But what makes Arráez unique is that even when he chases, he still makes contact-a lot of it.
Last season, the league average contact rate on pitches outside the zone was 55.3%. Arráez?
A staggering 92.3%.
That might sound impressive, but here’s the problem: just because you can hit a pitch doesn’t mean you should. Making weak contact on a pitch out of the zone is often worse than swinging through it. For Arráez, who rarely strikes out, the downside of that elite bat-to-ball skill is that he’s putting too many poor pitches in play-and the results reflect it.
The Giants’ Challenge: Quality Over Quantity
The Giants didn’t bring in Arráez to be a power bat or to change who he is. They want the version of him who controls at-bats, works pitchers into mistakes, and turns those mistakes into base hits. To get there, he needs to tighten up his zone discipline and get back to hunting the right pitches.
This isn’t about reinventing the wheel. It’s about refining what already makes Arráez special.
His elite contact ability is still there. But if the Giants can help him recalibrate his approach-swinging at fewer borderline pitches and focusing on quality contact-they might just unlock the hitter who won three batting titles.
It’s a fascinating test case for the Giants’ hitting development staff. Can they help one of the game’s purest hitters get back to doing what he does best? If they can, this one-year deal could end up being one of the savviest moves of the offseason.