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Luis Arraez Adds to His Phillies Legend by Leaping Over the Tag at Home Plate, Running Right to the Dugout
By Matt Schultz
Published:
The Phillies beat the Nationals 7-3 on Thursday night, and my big takeaway, once again, is that Luis Arraez is the man. This guy rules. He’s had an RBI in his first three games with the Phils. It’s so fun to watch him enter the batter’s box and actually feel confident he’s going to do something good. When he has runners in scoring position, I am positive he’s driving in at least one. And I haven’t felt that way about a Phillies hitter in a very long time. Maybe ever. It’s incredible.
And maybe I am just excited… the newness of it all… but I don’t get why he’s not the highest-paid player in baseball. He should be a superstar. He should be on the cover of MLB: The Show, maybe for several years straight. He’s doing what every player in MLB should try to do. Batting him cleanup feels like a cheat code. Arraez is the future. Singles are the future. Small ball. Bunting. Stealing bases. This is the path forward. Future societies will look back at Arraez somehow being on five teams before he’s 30 the way we look back on smoking on airplanes or using waterbeds: a weird thing that was a bad idea and will never happen again. I take back what I said about possibly just being excited. After typing it all out I believe it all to be true. Arraez is the new Shohei Ohtani. I will not back down from this…
Plus he’s is doing stuff like this:
I can’t even be mad that he didn’t score the run. My enjoyment of the content far outweighs the joy I would’ve gotten from him scoring there. This is good stuff. It’s always fun to see something you’ve never seen before, and I’ve never seen anything quite like this.
The leap was exhilarating. The one huge sidestep/juke was thrilling. The realization that he’d really have to lay out to make an attempt at the plate, and even then would probably be tagged, was very funny. The noble acceptance and quick turnaround and brisk jog back to the dugout was even funnier. Excellent sequence. I gotta keep saying it: Arraez rules.
Matt Schultz is a comedy and sports writer from Philadelphia. He’s written extensively for ClickHole, The Onion, and Conan O’Brien’s Team Coco. His work has been featured in Vulture, Deadspin, The A.V. Club, Paste Magazine, and other publications. Much of his sports journalism can be found on college basketball websites that don’t exist anymore (PhilaHoops Heads rise up…) email: M.Schultz@sportradar.com