Luis Arraez, a rare delight for Giants fans, collects four hits in potential farewell game

SAN FRANCISCO — Not many major-league franchises do sendoffs and acknowledgments as well as the San Francisco Giants.

They held days of appreciation for Buster Posey and Brandon Crawford. They retired Will Clark’s number. They’ll honor newly enshrined Hall of Famer Jeff Kent with a number retirement ceremony at the end of next month. Wall of Fame recipients? They receive more ovations than a Kennedy Center honoree. You cannot call someone a Good Giant™ without the proper typographical flair. The accolades and applause aren’t reserved for the franchise icons, either. When former Giants right-hander Tyler Rogers visited with the Toronto Blue Jays three weeks ago, the video productions team had the highlight tribute video cued up to show between innings.

When you win the admiration of fans at 24 Willie Mays Plaza, that bond is difficult to break. Hunter Pence was such a Good Giant™  that the organization saluted him twice. The first time, he was gifted a motorized scooter and whizzed out of the ballpark.

So many things have changed at Oracle Park this season. The team has fallen fast and hard in literal and figurative ways. Even the scooter rides are dangerous now, especially when a mishap gets ominously time-stamped as “early Saturday/late Sunday.”

Between any sets of lines you choose, this entire year in San Francisco has been a study in ineptitude.

And against that shabby backdrop, Luis Arraez has been a shining light.

When the Giants signed Arraez to a one-year, $12 million contract in the offseason, they made the risky decision to let him play second base every day, even though the rest of the league had relegated him to “designated hitter and first base if necessary” status. Arraez responded by mixing belief with work ethic and turning himself into one of the league’s best defenders at the position. He entered Wednesday’s homestand finale with plus-10 OAA (outs above average), which ranked second at his position and tied for 10th among all players.

At the plate, of course, Arraez has delivered everything the Giants expected and then some. The three-time batting champion is on his way to a fourth. He has seemingly bent every blade of outfield grass at one point or another while hitting .361 in 49 home games. His 4.5 percent strikeout rate is the lowest in the majors.

You can be a productive major-league player. You can be a competitive major-league player. Being one does not guarantee that you will be the other. Arraez fits the dual description. It wasn’t his fault that not enough of his Giants teammates could say the same.

The Giants are on their way to missing the playoffs for the ninth time in 10 seasons. As they seek to create a winning culture, Arraez’s competitiveness is an emblem for everything the organization must stress to turn itself around.

He’s the kind of player you want to have around. Which is why nobody is looking forward to what is almost certain to happen next.

The trade deadline is five days away. The Giants are expected to move their impending free agents, including Arraez, and salvage whatever young talent they can for the future. So, while Wednesday afternoon’s 16-3 victory over the Milwaukee Brewers was a day to celebrate rookie catcher Daniel Susac’s first two major league home runs and a series win over a division leader, it was also a likely sendoff to a player who spent four months entertaining and connecting with everyone who watched him compete.

If Arraez was giving home fans a final glimpse of himself in a Giants uniform, it was a fitting one. He went 4-for-5. If he hadn’t been lifted for a pinch hitter in the eighth inning, when Milwaukee had a position player on the mound, there’s a good chance he would’ve made it 5-for-6.

“He’s our modern-day version of Tony Gwynn,” said Logan Webb, who pitched six innings to get the victory. “Watching him from the opposing side, I wasn’t a fan of him because he’d get hits off me. His power takes are incredible. But getting to know him as a friend and teammate and see the work he puts in every day, it’s pretty special.”

Arraez’s four-hit game boosted his average to .331, which leads the major leagues. At home, he’s been a .361 hitter.

“It’s tough to hit here,” Arraez said. “It’s a big ballpark. But I just try to do my job, put the ball in play, and I get results.”

Arraez claimed that he wasn’t focused on the trade deadline. Whenever his time as a Giant is up, though, he said he would be grateful to the organization for giving him a shot to reestablish himself as a second baseman.

“Nobody trusts me,” he said. “And this organization trusts me to play second base, and I really appreciate that.”

And the crowds of 30,000-plus?

“Ah, they are amazing,” Arraez said. “Every day they show up for us and get loud every day. I love the fans. I want to say thanks for them.”

As much as Arraez has endeared himself to everyone in the Giants organization, it would be malpractice for a 46-62 team to keep him through the rest of the season. He likely isn’t a candidate for a qualifying offer, so there isn’t even the potential for draft pick compensation if he signs elsewhere.

Casey Schmitt’s season-ending knee injury — he’s headed for surgery to repair a torn left meniscus that he sustained on the basepaths Monday night — would make the body blow of trading Arraez land even harder. Schmitt was set to take over as the everyday second baseman. Now, it’s an opportunity that could go to Jesus Rodríguez, Jonah Cox or Christian Koss, in some combination.

Survey the Giants clubhouse, though, and what the players say they’ll lament about an Arraez trade is losing the person.

“I tell people this a lot: He’s the exact type of guy that you want on your team,” rookie first baseman Bryce Eldridge said. “Obviously, there’s a lot of talk about him getting moved, which is unfortunate. But he’s a great baseball player. He’s got that competitive edge that he brings literally every single day. It’s a lot of games, and it’s hard to do that every single day, but he does it. It’s above my pay grade, but I’d like to play with him for a long time.

“I’m going through a pretty tough stretch, and (Tuesday) night, he’s at my locker,” Eldridge continued. “It’s,’You’re a great player. You’ll be all right.’ He picks up everyone like that, and I’m very, very thankful I’ve gotten to play with him.”

Giants manager Tony Vitello said Arraez “made everybody’s day better. We don’t have enough time here, and I’d put it in a note to him. … But I think a succinct, exact answer is he literally made everyone’s day better, every day, and there wasn’t any days off for that theory either.”

So many similar things were said about Andrew McCutchen when the Giants acquired him in 2018 and then traded him, at the deadline, after their ambitious offseason didn’t produce the winning season they’d envisioned. McCutchen was a daily inspiration in his four months as a Giant. It’s a shame it couldn’t last longer.

In 2018 and again now, the Giants haven’t played well enough to deserve to keep nice things. They are playing better of late, though. They took two of three from Milwaukee to win their second consecutive series and finish a 4-2 homestand. On their last road trip, they should have won and could have swept a series against the Seattle Mariners, but they wound up dropping two of three. Kansas City swept them after the Giants led in all three games there, too.

As strange as it might be to point out, when you count the two games they won against the Colorado Rockies just before the All-Star break, the Giants haven’t been too many bounces and breaks away from winning 13 of their last 14 games. Even in that wildly best-case scenario, they’d still be a shade under .500 and likely sellers at the trade deadline.

But they’ve been playing better baseball lately, and that makes the impending sell-off — starting pitchers Robbie Ray and Tyler Mahle are coming up on free agency — even more of a bummer for anyone who just wants to see cleaner baseball down the stretch.

No doubt, trading Arraez can help the Giants organization get healthier. But it’ll also make the team a whole lot duller over the final two months.