Milwaukee Brewers: Orlando Arcia finding his swing

Milwaukee Brewers shortstop Orlando Arcia would struggle mightily at the plate for much of 2018, but this season he has found more consistency.

To put it simply, the start of the 2018 season for Orlando Arcia at the plate was a rough one. At the All-Star break, Arcia would have a slash line of .197/.231/.251 and had been sent to Triple-A two different times. And those stints in the minors likely would have been longer had it not been for the Milwaukee Brewers lack of depth at shortstop.

However, things would turn around for Arcia in the second half of the season as he would post an average of .290 with a .706 OPS, and was surprisingly one of the Brewers best bats during the playoffs.

This offseason, Arcia would stay red-hot during his play in the Venezuelan Winter League and over 72 at-bats he would record a batting average of .333, an OPS of .863 and would have only five strikeouts.

The question on everyone’s mind was, could Arcia carry that momentum over to the 2019 season?

It is likely that Arcia will never be a .300 hitter over the course of a full season as we saw in spurts from him at the end of last year. But if he can give the bottom of this Milwaukee Brewers lineup a bat that will consistently be in the .250 to .270 range, it’ll have a trickle-down effect to the rest of the batting order and that is just what Arcia has done in 2019.

On the season, Arcia has a slash line of .257/.324/.416 with 28 RBIs and eight home runs, which has already exceeded his 2018 total of three.

The bugaboo for Arcia at the plate has always been his lack of patience and his inability to resist that pitch low and outside of the strike zone. While we will still see him swing at that pitch and few other bad ones, his vision and patience are much improved and the results at the plate illustrate that.

In 2019, Arcia is striking out four percent less and his walk rate is up five percent compared to last season. When it comes to pitches out of the strike zone, which mentioned above can be an Achilles heel for Arcia, his swing rate at those pitches has dropped eight percent.

As a result of drawing more walks and laying off poor pitches, when Arcia does swing he is making much better contact because the quality of the pitch is that much better. His hard-hit rate is up six percent this season and his home run to fly ball ratio stands at 15.7 percent, which is over an 11 percent increase from 2018. Meaning, at that rate if Arcia hits a fly ball, it has a decent chance of leaving the park based on league averages.

As good as this Milwaukee Brewers offense was in 2018, a weakness was the bottom of the batting order. And while Arcia’s play at the end of the season wasn’t the only factor in the team’s end of the season playoff push, it did play a big role.

When Arcia is swinging the bat well, it forces pitchers to face the middle of the batting order, knowing they won’t be getting any reprieve in the bottom portion. Also, with him getting on base consistently, it clears the pitcher’s spot in the lineup and sets the table for Lorenzo Cain and Christian Yelich to knock in some runs.

I do believe that Arcia’s play at the plate this season has been a contributor as to why the Brewers have been able to survive offensively with a struggling Travis Shaw and Jesus Aguilar up to this point in the season.

We all know what Arcia can bring to this Milwaukee Brewers team defensively, but his contributions at the plate this season have been a big boost and they will need him to keep producing if they hope to make another playoff push.