Player Highlight: Tampa Bay Rays Outfielder Randy Arozarena

Randy Arozarena is having a great start to the season coming off his electric World Baseball Classic appearance. Arozarena is one of the better upcoming players in the league. His story involves him leaving his original home country of Cuba to play baseball in Mexico. He plays baseball good enough to be scouted by Major league scouts and eventually gets to the Major leagues. He has a breakout performance in the 2020 season playoffs. In the World Baseball Classic, Arozarena showed off his personality. He played for Team Mexico because he DM’d the Mexican President asking if he could play for them. The President saw to it that Arozarena and his family were able to get citizenship in Mexico and in return Arozarena would represent Mexico. Arozarena showed off his clutch hitting and amazing glove. Now let’s see what he’s done this season so far. 

Before we get too deep, let me just note that it’s 17 games into the season. So all his averages are slightly higher than his career averages. However, when you see his counting stats, 3 doubles, 4 homeruns, 18 RBI and 2 stolen bases, it confirms what the inflated averages are telling you. Arozarena is absolutely raking. It’s too early to say it’s his year but if he keeps this up, he’s on track for a better season than last year. 

When looking at his ratios, you can see that Arozarena has just been mashing the ball like no tomorrow. This is evidenced by his significantly lower walk rate and homerun rate. Nearly 2 percent down and 5 percent down on his career averages. Once again the small sample size should be noted here, and his ratios should creep back to near his career average.

In this run value chart from Baseball Savant, I’ve highlighted the top four pitches he sees the most. You can get a feel for how he’s handling each pitch this year compared to 2022. For example, the fastball is by far his best pitch to hit. This was the case last year as well. Another example of a minor but still early on change is the sinker. Last year, he had -1 Run value on the sinker and this year it’s 1. He’s only seen 51 sinkers in 2023 so far compared to 425 last year. But the change seems to be the 4 percent whiff percentage and 15 percent K percentage. It means that he’s not swinging over/under this pitch as much as last year. Obviously still early, but it’s possible he’s just seeing the sinker better this year.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1udQhTzvoa3Z1_23hTaQSl9D6Cd52QV46/view?usp=share_link

Above is an example of Arozarena hitting a sinker from the bottom of the zone out of the park. 

I think that Arozarena is one of the more electric players in the league. It’s also true and according to the percentile rankings by Baseball Savant that Arozarena is one of the best pure hitters in the league. I think Arozarena is set to have a great season and will definitely be leading the charge for the Tampa Bay Rays this season and beyond.

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Thanks to Baseball Reference and Baseball Savant for the charts and statistics!

World Baseball Classic: Amazing Baseball

I hope you watched the World Baseball Classic (WBC) in 2023 because if you missed the past two weeks, then you missed a lot of great baseball. That is my overall takeaway from this tournament. Nearly every was interesting in some way and offered some kind of drama. In terms of upsets, there weren’t too many but Mexico and Australia both made it past previous points they hadn’t been. This post isn’t necessarily a recap, it will be just a few thoughts I have about the WBC. I’ll start with some teams that were impressive in semifinals/finals. Then I’ll move on to the injury and timing controversies. Last, I want to talk about how great this tournament is for baseball.

Japan emerges Victorious!

We’ll start with obviously amazing semifinals and championship game. In the semifinals you had USA vs. Venezuela which featured the Trea Turner show. On the other side you had Japan vs. Mexico which featured the Randy Arozarena show. In the USA vs. Venezuela game, there was drama as it went back and forth. But in the 8th inning down by two, Trea Turner hits go-ahead grand slam to clinch a ticket to the finals. In the Japan vs. Mexico match, Randy makes an amazing catch and clutch hits for Mexico. But Japan’s superior hitting skills overcome, with a walkoff double to punch their ticket to the finals. In the finals, we can get a back and forth homerun competition, with the USA and Japan trading blows. But in the sweetest ending of all, All-World Superstar Pitcher/DH Shohei Ohtani faces his LA Angels teammate, future Hall of Famer Mike Trout in the bottom of the 9th with two outs. In the most incredible at-bat, Ohtani throws a third strike nasty slider to strikeout Trout to end the game. All time moment between the best players to ever play.

Edwin Diaz and Jose Altuve Injured!

After beating the Dominican Republic in the last game of Pool play, Puerto Rico celebrated on the field because they were headed to the quarterfinals. However in an unfortunate and freaky turn of events, Mets star closer Edwin Diaz fell to the ground with a hurt knee. It turn out that while celebrating Diaz tore a tendon in his knee. This was devastating news to Mets fans and Puerto Rico fans. Diaz is out for the season. Another injury occured to Jose Altuve, although less severe. While playing against the USA in the quarterfinal, Altuve was hit in the hand by Rockies closer Daniel Bard. In another unfortunate turn of events, it broke his hand. Altuve’s timeline to return is eight to ten weeks.

The controversy here is that people are arguing these two players may not have gotten injured if they sat out the WBC. However, the counter argument is that you could injured almost anywhere. I think it’s a two part problem, one problem is you can get injured anywhere. You can’t fix that. The second problem is the timing of the WBC. It may seem counter-intuitive but moving it during the All Star break or after the season might be better. I just think that many players coming from a spring training environment (Relaxed) to a adrenaline filled playoff, game 7 of the World Series environment (stressed) is probably a little jarring physically. Plus the fact that pitchers aren’t necessarily built up and stretched out. I just think the level of play could be much higher with better timing. Also in mid-season, there is less chance of over-working injuries.

Conclusion-Great for Baseball!

The WBC was absolutely one of the best two weeks of baseball I’ve ever watched. Trust me, I watched nearly part of every single game. The environment in Pool A, located in Taiwan was electric and exciting. The quarter, semi and finals were all amazing games with huge moments. Even players expressed that WBC was something above even a normal playoff/world series game. I think it would be in the interests of MLB to make this tournament more accessible. They should advertise it and push players to participate. With the right marketing and a large number of MLB, NPB, KBO and other leagues’ stars it could be something similar to the FIFA World Cup. They might even think about expanding the field although I felt like 20 teams was plenty. But overall I just thought was an entertaining and very watchable two weeks of baseball. I’m really looking forward to 2026.

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