Milwaukee Brewers: Another Chance for Orlando Arcia to Prove Himself

With Luis Urias starting the season in Appleton, Orlando Arcia is given another opportunity to be the Milwaukee Brewers’ primary shortstop.

Other than an excellent postseason run during the 2018 playoffs, for the past two seasons, Orlando Arcia’s performance at the plate has been quite underwhelming for the Milwaukee Brewers. During 2018 and 2019 combined, Arcia would have 912 plate appearances and slash .228/.277/.333 with an OPS+ of just 60.

Yet even with his struggles, Arcia has been a constant in the Milwaukee Brewers’ lineup. Some of this is due to his defensive prowess – although according to Outs Above Average by Statcast, he was below average in 2019 – and truthfully, the Brewers just didn’t have many internal options to compete with Arcia for playing time.

Well, that was until this offseason.

As a part of the trade package that sent Trent Grisham to San Diego, one of the players that Milwaukee would receive in return was Luis Urias.

Although he just turned 23-years-old, Urias has plenty of minor league experience having played six seasons in the Padres’ system where he would accumulate over 2,400 plate appearances with a .308 average and a .830 OPS.

At the big league level, Urias saw his first real action in 2019, posting a .223/.329/.326 slash line with an OPS+ of 76 in 249 plate appearances. Certainly, nothing to write home about, but at only 22-years-old at the time and in his first real big league action, Milwaukee Brewers’ GM David Stearns liked what he saw (via Milwaukee Journal Sentinel):

"“This is a player who performed at very high levels at very young ages throughout his career,” Stearns said. “This is a player with an elite (strike) zone control, has demonstrated elite contact skills in his past, and is also a very gifted defender. So, this is somebody we’re very happy to bring into the organization.”"

Coming into Spring Training this season, the expectation was that Urias and Arcia were going to be splitting time at shortstop with Urias potentially taking over the full-time role depending on how things played out. Unfortunately, Urias missed the entire shortened spring season after suffering a hand injury during winter ball that required surgery.

With Urias sidelined, Arcia was back to being the primary shortstop, and he took advantage of the situation posting a .296/.310/.926 slash line with five home runs in 29 plate appearances. With a refined and more in control swing, Arcia was making a strong case that he should retain his starting shortstop role.

However, as we all know, the MLB season was put on hold due to the coronavirus, and teams didn’t reconvene for Summer Camp until just a few weeks ago. Arcia would be looking to carry his momentum from Spring Training over into Camp while the now healthy Urias was ready to compete for playing time.

But that wasn’t the case, at least not for Urias. He would test positive for COVID-19, and he has been away from the team this entire time while not being able to return until he has two negative tests in a row.

So once again, through Summer Camp, Arcia was the primary shortstop for the Milwaukee Brewers, and we would learn on Tuesday from Robert Murray that when Urias is able to return to the team, he will head to Appleton in order to ease him back into the swing of things before rejoining the big league club.

Meaning, that once again, Orlando Arcia is your Brewers’ starting shortstop to open up the season, and without Urias throughout Spring Training or Summer Camp, it was a pretty easy job for him to win.

Now, if Arcia struggles, unlike last year, Craig Counsell does have Eric Sogard and Brock Holt to lean on. But of course, the hope is that those flashes and hot streaks that we’ve seen from Arcia in the past happen much more consistently.

Like a cat with nine lives, Arcia has another opportunity to earn the everyday shortstop duties for the Milwaukee Brewers. Let’s see how he performs this time.