Randy Arozarena

The Home Run Derby curse is mostly pseudo-science, but Arozarena is doing his best to disprove that line of thought. Arozarena was arguably on the best run of his regular season career in 2023 prior to the derby, but was terrible after it and the 2024 season was mostly an extension of the same. Arozarena did get to another 20-20 season and only he and Jose Ramirez has done that each of the past four seasons, but Arozarena is now has 926 post-derby plate appearances and has a .219/.332/.382 triple-slash line with 27 homers and 32 steals. It was long expected the Rays would deal Arozarena in his expensive years, but the move to Seattle was a terrible one for his run production situation and he hit 5 homers in 54 games after the trade. The puzzling part with Arozarena is the increased strikeout rate does not come from him chasing out of the zone but how his in-zone contact rate has declined now for three consecutive seasons. He has become a more disciplined hitter these days, but his struggles against fastballs in 2024 (.221 vs .282 in 2023) were extremely concerning. The volume should once again be there, but at what cost? Read Past Outlooks