Every Team's Most Interesting Player: Minnesota Twins, Luis Arraez

This is the 17th in a series of articles about the most interesting player for fantasy owners on each team heading into the 2020 season. We are going alphabetically, so today we’re going to talk about Luis Arraez of the Minnesota Twins.

The Twins are all about the long ball. They led MLB in homers last season with 307, one better than the mighty Yankees, and added Josh Donaldson, who socked 37 in 2019. So naturally, on a team built to sock opposing pitchers to death, I’ve chosen a player who hit all of four homers last season as their most interesting.

Arraez, 22, does not have power. He never hit more than three in the minor leagues, and he only hit four in his first crack at MLB pitching over 92 games. Arraez is not a source of power for fantasy owners. He is, however, an extremely cheap (No. 251 overall) source of batting average. While high batting average guys are rarely sexy picks, they can allow you to swing for the fences (pun intended) with the rest of your roster chasing high-variance guys with big power or speed potential. They also can become league-winners if they discover a power stroke unexpectedly; think Daniel Murphy or Jeff McNeil.

While Arraez doesn’t appear to have that power spike in him – Fangraphs only gives him a 45/45 in Raw Power and 20/30 Game Power – his hit tool is fantastic (45/60) and he’s torn through opposing pitchers since he debuted in Rookie ball. Since 2014 Arraez has never hit worse than .298, which was in 2018 at Double-A. Arraez does not strike out, walks more than you’d think for a contact hitter, and slashed .334/.399/.439 for the big club. Despite the lack of home runs, Arraez managed an .838 OPS thanks to 20 doubles and a triple. I wouldn’t expect those to all become home runs, but if Arraez can even get to 10 homers in his first full season he could morph into an everyday 2B option for fantasy owners.

The key for Arraez achieving and maintaining fantasy relevance is likely to be his spot in the batting order. Currently, he’s projected to hit seventh, where his contact skills may actually help him blow away his RBI projections which place him in the high 50s. That’s not what we want though. We want Arraez to ascend to the top spot, currently occupied by Max Kepler. While Kepler is a high-OBP option with major pop, Arraez is a more traditional table-setter. While he wouldn’t give Minnesota much scare factor in the leadoff spot, he’s shown more than enough on-base skills to reach at a level comparable to Kepler, and give players like Kepler, Nelson Cruz, Donaldson etc. a chance to drive him home. In this scenario, Arraez could become an 80+-run guy, with a .300+ batting average who also contributes some stolen bases too. That’s a player you want.