ATLANTA — It wasn’t long ago when the Braves went into spring training not knowing who would win their starting shortstop job, or even if they had a player worthy of that status on the roster, or if the decision to let Dansby Swanson walk in free agency would haunt them in their dreams, to say nothing of game nights.
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Instead, they go into this weekend with a once-after-thought named Orlando Arcia as the leading vote-getter in the National League All-Star balloting. He’s playing solid defense and hitting (.331), OPSing (.853) and clutching (.333 with runners in scoring position) well above his previous career averages, which figured to forever be the norm.
Not bad for a guy who had been so devalued in the trade market after five-plus seasons in Milwaukee that Braves general manager Alex Anthopoulos acquired Arcia in 2021 for one pitcher (Chad Sobotka) who’s now out of baseball and another one (Patrick Weigel) who’s laboring in obscurity for an independent team in Kansas City.
Arcia’s uprising has surprised many, if not most, if not all, if we’re really being honest, and that includes one smartass Atlanta columnist who last month had the temerity to write that the Braves were having a remarkable season, overcoming roster changes, injuries and “a black hole at shortstop.” (In my defense, Vaughn Grissom had fizzled and just been optioned to Gwinnett and Arcia had a short resume. Your honor.)
“’Black hole’ — you should frame that one, especially if he makes the All-Star team,” Anthopoulos said.
I hate it when they keep receipts.
Credit Arcia’s resolve. Credit the Braves’ player development and a PowerPoint.
First, about Arcia. There was a time when expectations for him were astronomical. He was the No. 1 prospect in the Brewers’ organization. He was the No. 6 prospect in baseball in 2016 — ahead of shortstops Dansby Swanson (eight), Trae Turner (11) and Alex Bregman (22). He made it to the majors with the Brewers but things seldom clicked offensively. Five-plus seasons netted a .244 batting average and .293 on-base percentage. Milwaukee decided to move on less than a week into the 2021 season.
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“It’s tough but this is a business and you have to be ready for anything to happen,” Arcia said through an interpreter. “It would be easy for anyone to get frustrated. But I thank God for the mentality that He gave me and the strength to keep going and keep fighting.”
Anthopoulos had been seeking a backup for Swanson, who missed chunks of the 2018 and 2019 seasons with injuries. He approached the Brewers about Arcia before the trade deadline in 2020 but Milwaukee said no. He circled back to them early in 2021 after Arcia started the season 1-for-11 in the first four games. The Brewers apparently had seen enough and eagerly made the deal for Weigel and Sobotka.
Oops. This is how you define seller’s remorse.
The Brewers got nothing out of Sobotka (zero games in the majors) or Weigel (three).
The Braves fixed Arcia … with a PowerPoint.
Anthopoulos and his staff had identified flaws in Arcia’s swing, as well as his wild throwing in the infield. So when the player arrived in Atlanta, they told him to report to Triple A for on- and off-field instruction. Anthopoulos drove to Gwinnett and with coaches and a translator opened a PowerPoint — a handful of slides illustrating areas that the Braves felt he needed to clean up at the plate and in the field.
“We do it a lot,” Anthopoulos said of PowerPoints. “When we bring a player in, we like to put something on the screen for them to see.”
Arcia hadn’t played in the minors in three years. But he was accepting of the assignment and embraced the instruction. He had never been exposed to anything like that before.
“I really liked it just because it let me know what I needed to work on,” he said. “The only thing I’ll say, and I’ve said this before, is it’s just a lot different being able to play every day and getting into a routine as opposed to coming off the bench and coming in cold and not playing for 15 days and then getting into the box.”
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He always had arm strength but he tended to be wild. Neither he nor Anthopoulos would specify what adjustment was made. “They showed me what I was doing and it definitely helped me a lot. But I would prefer to keep those things to myself so I can keep doing it.”
Results: FanGraphs’ defensive metric “def,” which factors in defensive runs saved above average and shows a player’s overall defensive value relative to league average, lists Swanson first among shortstops at 10.4. Arcia is a solid 10th in the majors at 4.0, and it’s important to note this is a cumulative stat and he has played far less games than most starters. He also ranks sixth in fielding percentage (.985) among shortstops.
If he had enough at-bats to qualify, Arcia would lead all major-league shortstops in batting average (.331) and on-base percentage (.383), rank second in OPS (.853) and third in slugging (.470). In seven previous seasons with the Brewers and Braves, he hit .243 with a .664 OPS.
Orlando Arcia continues to deliver 🔥
⭐️: https://t.co/W6qzMwejkW pic.twitter.com/kjbt74Rvws
— Atlanta Braves (@Braves) June 14, 2023
All-Star voting isn’t quite scientific. Arcia’s NL-leading 406,509 votes — ahead of the Mets’ Francisco Lindor and the Padres’ Xander Bogaerts — is partly attributed to the Braves’ attendance and fan base. But we can’t say it’s not deserved. Arcia is producing. If his level of success continues, his three-year, $7.3 million extension will look like relative nickels.
At the very least, he’s the answer at shortstop for the foreseeable future. No black hole.
He might even be the second-best player in the family. Arcia’s parents and four siblings all played baseball or softball. Older brother Oswaldo spent four years in the majors. But the real star was their mother, Lilibeth Giral, who played softball for the Venezuelan national team.
Her position: shortstop.
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Best athlete in the family?
“She is,” he said.
Arcia is keeping his success in perspective. He speaks like someone who gets on a hot streak and doesn’t even want to change his socks. But when asked about his sudden All-Star candidacy, he acknowledged a level of satisfaction and said, “If I wouldn’t be given the opportunity to play every day I wouldn’t be having this kind of success. It’s a big confidence thing when you know that you can go 0-for-4 today and be in the lineup tomorrow.”
If you didn’t see this coming, don’t feel bad. You’re not alone. And you could be the Brewers.
(Photo: Rick Osentoski / USA Today)
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