Batting practice … in a hotel room? It’s part of the ‘routine’ for Luis Arraez, baseball’s most unique hitter

Luis Arraez opened the door and revealed the secret to winning three batting titles.

Not even Tony Gwynn Jr. could believe it.

“Listen,” said the son of the late Hall of Famer, “my dad was as much of a worker as possible. Never once did he have a tee and a net in his hotel room. I walked into the room and watched this man go to work. It was mind-blowing.”

Wait, what? Batting practice … in a hotel room?

“Yeah,” Arraez said. “That’s one of my routines.”

» READ MORE: The Phillies know what’s needed to make the playoffs. Here’s how the race for the last two spots is shaping up.

In fact, since 2021, the new Phillies second baseman has traveled with a portable tee, a fold-up net, a short bat, and a small weight that fit neatly into his backpack. He sets it all up in his room, takes full or partial swings (without a ball) to perfect his compact stroke, and often sends the video to his personal hitting coach in Miami.

“Just a short move, point A to point B, and that’s all he was working on the whole time,” Gwynn said on The Inquirer’s Phillies Extra podcast. “And at that point I was like, ‘OK, this gentleman is a little bit different.’”

In 2026, he’s actually one of a kind.

Arraez, 29, ranks in the lowest percentile among major league batters in bat speed, hard-hit rate, and barrel percentage, which measures how frequently a hitter makes contact with the optimal combination of exit velocity and launch angle. And these days, baseball is obsessed with exit velocities and launch angles.

Here’s the thing, though: Arraez has more hits than any player since 2022. He has won batting titles in both leagues: 2022 with the Twins (.316), 2023 with the Marlins (.354), and 2024 with the Marlins and Padres (.314).

Oh, and did we mention he hardly ever strikes out?

Entering the weekend, Arraez made contact on 92.2% of his swings. The major league average was 76.4%. His career strikeout rate was 5.9%, including 4.5% this season. In the last 50 years, three players struck out less than 6% of the time while maintaining a .300 batting average: Arraez, Phillies interim manager Don Mattingly, and the late Tony Gwynn, a first-ballot Hall of Famer.

“The skills that he has, they are so different that I think players in a lot of ways consider it a novelty,” said former Marlins general manager Kim Ng, who traded for Arraez before the 2023 season. “It doesn’t have to be just shooting for pull-side fly balls in hopes they’ll go over the fence.”

Yet the industry no longer values a contact-hitting savant. Arraez has been traded three times in the last 3½ years. And he went unsigned as a free agent last winter until a few days before spring training when the Giants gave him a one-year, $12 million contract.

» READ MORE: Alec Bohm, Bryce Harper, Bryson Stott address how Luis Arraez helped save the Phillies’ offense

On Aug. 3, the Phillies made a deadline trade for Arraez, a lefty-hitting second baseman, because their search for a righty-hitting outfielder lacked appealing options. And they were able to fit him in only because Bryce Harper consented to move back to right field for the balance of the season, part of a realignment in which they displaced three-fourths of the infield.

But now that Arraez is here, his one-of-one skill set will be on display for a new audience. The Phillies will form their opinion about his value, especially to a lineup that tends to strike out frequently and struggles at times to score without hitting home runs.

Maybe they will try to re-sign Arraez in the offseason. Maybe he will pack up his travel batting cage and shuffle to his sixth major-league team in a nomadic career. Whatever the case, the Phillies will have baseball’s most unique hitter for the playoff push.

The Phillies aren’t the first team to move chess pieces around the field to accommodate a trade for Arraez.

Jazz Chisholm Jr. was an All-Star second baseman for the Marlins in 2022. But after a 93-loss season, they swapped righty Pablo López and two minor leaguers to the Twins for Arraez and moved Chisholm to center field.

“We were just lacking bats,” Ng said by phone last week. “Jazz was really good at second, but we also felt like he could be put in the outfield. We felt like he would really grow into the position, and then, you’d have two premium bats in the middle of the field.”

» READ MORE: Inside the hitters’ meeting that sparked the Phillies’ on-base percentage turnaround this month

Arraez held up his end. He mimicked Ted Williams for almost half the 2023 season, carrying a .401 average into the final week of June. He finished with 203 hits, a career-high, and won his second batting title.

But Ng recalled Arraez’s impact beyond the knocks.

“I think our players were in awe of him,” said Ng, the commissioner of the 2-year-old Athletes Unlimited Softball League. “He’d walk up to the plate and size up the field and take note of where players were positioned, and he’d just put it where they weren’t. And I think the players were just so awe-struck by him and this uncanny ability that he has, and we were hoping that that would rub off in some ways on others.

“And I’m not saying it was a direct correlation, but if you look at our one-run record in 2022 vs. our one-run record in ’23, vastly different. Is it all because of Luis? No. We tried to change the way we thought about the game across the board. But Luis was a huge instrument to that change.”

Indeed, the Marlins went from 69 wins to 84 and made the playoffs largely due to a 33-14 record in one-run games. Arraez finished eighth in the NL MVP voting.

Ng said teammates became aware of Arraez’s work habits, including hitting for 15 to 20 minutes each morning in a batting cage at his house, similar to his exercises in road hotels. Seven-time All-Star outfielder Nelson Cruz introduced him to the daily ritual when they were teammates with the Twins.

“I do my routine every day,” Arraez said. “I’ll bring my short bat and my regular bath and a little heavy weight to do my routine and then to prepare my body and especially my mind.

» READ MORE: Trea Turner isn’t moving off shortstop (yet). The Phillies’ goal for now: Help him get better.

“It’s helped a lot. You can tell. I feel really good when I do my routine every day.”

And when Arraez got to the ballpark, the young Marlins would either pick his brain about his approach at the plate or absorb it like a sponge by watching.

“His personality and the effect that he had on the team, it really was infectious,” Ng said. “And I do think that he was one of the core pillars of that team.”

The Phillies are seeing similar benefits. Mattingly batted him cleanup to utilize his contact skills in front of Harper. And even as Arraez cooled after going 5-for-13 with four RBIs in his first three games, the Phillies’ collective strikeout rate plummeted from 23.6% before he arrived to 15.9% through his first 11 games.

Coincidence? Maybe.

Then again …

“I mean, I’ve definitely learned a lot from watching him,” Alec Bohm said. “It’s the modern-day Tony Gwynn. Like, it’s one of the best bat-to-ball [hitters] that any of us have ever seen. So, yeah, I think obviously bringing a guy like that in not only makes the lineup better, but it’s also just hitters watching other good hitters. I think there’s something to be said for that.”

Ng left the Marlins amid a reorganization of the front office after the 2023 season. In May 2024, Arraez got traded to the Padres.

Upon arriving in San Diego, he visited the 9½-foot tall statue of Tony Gwynn — titled “Mr. Padre” — outside Petco Park.

And he asked Gwynn’s son to accompany him.

“I was like, ‘Of course,’” said Gwynn Jr., an eight-year major-league outfielder and now a Padres radio broadcaster. “Because I had seen Luis play, and it was very apparent his style of hitting was different than everybody else in Major League Baseball and had some resemblance to my father.”

Arraez seems to appreciate baseball history, maybe because it often feels like he’s from a bygone era. With the Twins, he became close with Rod Carew, the Hall of Famer who mentored him about using the field and being satisfied with line drives and ground balls instead of trying to pull everything in the air to right field.

Even before the trade to San Diego, Arraez heard the comparisons to Gwynn. His nickname: “La Regadera” — “The Sprinkler,” in Spanish — because he sprays the ball around the field.

If he played 35 years ago, he would’ve fit right in alongside Gwynn, Carew, and Wade Boggs. As Phillies hitting coach Kevin Long said, Arraez “would’ve been elite.”

But the 21st century launch-angle craze has changed not only hitting styles but also how players are paid. In 1991, when hitting for average still mattered, 29 players batted at least .300. Last season, there were seven; Trea Turner was the only .300 hitter in the National League.

“When there’s economics involved, players aren’t dumb,” Gwynn said. “They’re going to shoot for the moon in terms of paydays.”

And it’s moonshot homers, not singles up the middle that pay the most. Arraez, signed by the Twins as a teenager out of Venezuela for $40,000, has never had a multiyear contract. His highest annual salary: $14 million in 2025, hardly a pittance but tied for only 63rd among position players last season.

» READ MORE: What makes Bryce Harper and Kyle Schwarber such unique stars? We asked each about the other.

But his approach at the plate hasn’t changed to amplify his bank account.

“I can’t change,” Arraez said. “If I change, I’ll be in my house watching the guys play baseball.”

Said Gwynn: “There is certainly space in this game, if you’re going to be as skilled as him, to make money that can set you up for the rest of your life. Maybe not in the 30s and 35 million [per year], but you can get in that 10- to 20-[million] range and do pretty well for yourself.

“And I think Luis is unique in that self-awareness. My dad used to say this all the time — and it was part joke but part serious — and that’s ‘know thyself.’ And Luis knows himself very well, and he has chosen to maximize the skill set that God has given him.”

So, Arraez packs up his backpack and moves right along, from hotel room to hotel room, playing the hits like they used to do.

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Tony Gwynn Jr. is a former major league outfielder and son of late Hall of Famer Tony Gwynn. Over the last two years, he got to know new Phillies second baseman Luis Arraez, whose contact skills at the plate often draw comparisons to Gwynn. Tony Jr. joined Phillies Extra to discuss his father, Arraez, and the bonds that connect them. Watch here.

You can also subscribe to the podcast version of Phillies Extra on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

Previous episodes: Kevin Stocker | Bobby Dickerson | Jim Bowden | John Middleton | Ryan Howard | Dan Baker | Ricky Bottalico | Preston Mattingly | Caleb Cotham | Larry Bowa