Milwaukee Brewers: It’s Now or Never for Orlando Arcia

With Luis Urias out for Spring Training with an injury, it’s now or never for Orlando Arcia to step up and produce for the Milwaukee Brewers.

Orlando Arcia made his debut with the Milwaukee Brewers back during the 2016 season, playing in 55 games with 216 plate appearances. However, it was his performance during 2017 that led many to believe that Arcia had the potential to be the Brewers shortstop of the future.

That year Arcia would slash .277/.324.407 with 15 home runs and flashed some fantastic defensive skills. Unfortunately since then, things have not gone well for Arcia, especially at the plate.

Over the last two seasons combined, Arcia would slash just .228/.277/.333 with a measly OPS+ of 60. He also continues to strike out at a fairly high rate and doesn’t draw many walks. Outside of a nice stretch during Milwaukee’s 2018 postseason run, Arcia has been a liability on offense.

And to some extent, I think Brewers’ management knew that he was never going to light it up at the plate year in and year out, and they were willing to accept that given his ability on defense. But even that took a significant dip in 2019.

According to Statcast’s new defensive metric, Outs Above Average, Arcia finished last season at -4. A far cry from the +12 he was credited with in 2018 and compared to other shortstops around baseball, he was a below average defender as well.

So now with consistently poor performances at the plate being coupled with sub-par defense, it resulted in the Brewers making a trade this offseason that landed them a young, up and coming player in Luis Urias.

At just 22-years-old, Urias already has plenty of minor league experience having accumulated over 2,400 plate appearances with an average of .308 and an OPS of .830. He also saw decent playing time in San Diego last season where he appeared in 71 games and posted a slash line of .223/.329/.326.

While those certainly aren’t eye-popping numbers at the big league level, he is still very young and GM David Stearns really likes what he has seen from Urias over his short career and expects him to step in and be an impact player right away.

In fact, prior to his injury, Urias was going to be competing with Arcia during Spring Training for playing time and many expected him to be the Milwaukee Brewers starting shortstop on Opening Day.

However, with Urias likely out for the duration of Spring Training, with Arcia not having to split as much time at shortstop, he is afforded one more opportunity to show that he deserves to be the starter. Yet on the flip side, it’s also fair to wonder if it’s already to late for him.

This season Arcia is earning a base salary of $2.2 million and is arbitration eligible the next two years. Meanwhile, Urias is only earning $583,500 in 2020 and doesn’t become arbitration eligible until 2022.

So to put it simply, for two seasons now, Arcia has struggled mightily at the plate, has seen his defensive productivity decline, and the newly acquired Urias, who was a highly touted prospect is going to cost Milwaukee less and he’s under team control longer.

Obviously there are many factors that favor Urias and this is a type of move that we’ve seen the Brewers make before under Stearns. Meaning, the writing may already be on the wall for Arcia as he could be a potential trade candidate as the season progresses.

With that said, Arcia is likely going to have plenty of opportunities through the spring and even in to the regular season depending on Urias recovery time. So if he’s going to step up and perform, it’s really now or never.

All stats courtesy of Fangraphs, Baseball Reference, Spotrac, and Statcast