At the start of the offseason, 15 position players appeared on the top 30 free-agent list crafted by MLB.com’s Mark Feinsand. In the wake of a free-agent frenzy that saw Kyle Tucker head to Hollywood, Bo Bichette land in Queens and Cody Bellinger re-up in the Bronx, only two of those hitters remain on the open market. And they could not be any different.
Just look at how different their percentile rankings are on Baseball Savant. Where one zigs, the other tends to zag.
For the sake of this exercise, we’re going to focus strictly on their respective hitting profiles, since the bulk of their value lies in the box — not with the glove. Suárez, 34, owns a career 113 wRC+ (which measures a hitter’s overall offensive production compared to league average), though he posted a 125 wRC+ last season. Arraez took the opposite route: His 104 wRC+ in ’25 was the lowest single-season mark of his career, but he has a career 117 wRC+.
Here’s a look at what makes these two players so different from one another.
Arraez is a genius at putting bat to ball, already establishing himself as one of the best contact hitters of all time. In each of the past four seasons, Arraez has posted the lowest whiff rate (the percentage of swings resulting in a miss) among qualified hitters. Last year, his 5.3% swing-and-miss rate set a new career best, as did his 3.1% strikeout rate, which happened to be the lowest strikeout rate by any hitter in a full season since Tony Gwynn in 1995.
But this isn’t just about the fact that Arraez is making contact; it’s that he’s doing so in an era where it’s more difficult to make contact than ever before. Perhaps the best way to look at this is via K%+, or the league-adjusted strikeout rate, because striking out 100 times in 2025 is different from striking out 100 times in, say, 1995. Sure enough, Arraez has the fourth-lowest career era-adjusted strikeout rate of all time, per FanGraphs, better than Gwynn himself.
You don’t have to check that list to know Suárez isn’t on it. Contact has never been a part of his skill set. Last season, Suárez posted a 33.3% whiff rate, which was both a career high and a bottom-10 mark in the Majors, among hitters to take at least 400 plate appearances. Suárez’s strikeout rate (29.8%) was in the fourth percentile of MLB. He struck out 196 times, the fourth most in baseball, whereas Arraez has struck out just 186 times in the last six years combined.
Arraez has the undisputed advantage when it comes to making contact. But in the power department, Suárez thrives.
Suárez tied his single-season high with 49 home runs last season, which was also good for the fifth most in the Majors — behind only Cal Raleigh, Kyle Schwarber, Shohei Ohtani and Aaron Judge. Not bad company there.
Then there’s Arraez, who owns 36 career home runs. His best power output came in 2023, when he posted a .469 slugging percentage, which is more or less in line with Suárez’s career .464 SLG.
Last year, Arraez had just one barrel (essentially, a hard-hit ball in the air). His barrel rate was in the first percentile of MLB, while his hard-hit rate (16.7%) ranked as the lowest mark among all qualified hitters. Suárez, on the other hand, posted an 89th-percentile barrel rate (14.3%) and a career-high 78th-percentile hard-hit rate (47.6%).
The lone barrel of Arraez’s 2025 season was a 402-foot home run he hit on June 28 in Cincinnati, and it was his only batted ball all of last season that traveled at least 400 feet. Suárez hit 28 batted balls of that distance or further, more than everyone not named Judge, Ohtani, Schwarber or Pete Alonso.
Do you really want to see how different these two hitters are? Well, sometimes, a picture is worth a thousand words.
In bashing 49 home runs, the righty Suárez frequently tapped into his pull-side power, which is the optimal way for hitters to slug. That’s why you see the cluster of dots beyond the left-field fence in the spray chart above. Arraez, a left-handed hitter, is the antithesis: His 75 opposite-field hits ranked second most in the Majors, and 19 more than the third-highest total. Hence, the swarm of orange dots in left field.
Last year, Suárez’s pulled air-ball rate was 28.6%, the fifth highest among qualified right-handed hitters, while only 10 righties pulled the ball at a higher clip. Among left-handed hitters, Arraez had a 12.6% pulled airball rate, which is 14th lowest, and pulled the ball less often than all but five lefty hitters.
A lot of this has to do with the way they swing the bat. Suárez’s swing is designed to elevate the baseball. Attack angle is a Statcast metric that measures the angle of the bat at impact with the ball, with positive numbers showing a bat moving upward. So, in Suárez’s case, his 18° attack angle is among the most extreme in the game and representative of a fly-ball hitter, which Suárez is. His 67.9% air-ball rate is well above the league average of 55.8%.
Arraez, meanwhile, had an average attack angle of six degrees last season, among the lowest in baseball.
We won’t talk so much about the markets for Arraez and Suárez as we will their potential fits — and, specifically, their fit in a lineup. Because of their distinct profiles, there may not be much overlap there. The team that lands Suárez will likely be one that could use a legitimate middle-of-the-order power bat; the club that nets Arraez might be more in the market for a contact-oriented veteran to offset a strikeout-heavy group.
Let’s start with Arraez. MLB.com’s Mike Petriello explored this in November, but it’s worth revisiting now, with the heavy lifting of the offseason behind us. Contact plays well at spacious Coors Field, and the Rockies had the second-worst strikeout rate in the league last season. Only the Angels posted a higher strikeout rate, and Los Angeles hasn’t done much to fix that problem: They’ve more or less replaced one strikeout-prone hitter (Taylor Ward) with another (Josh Lowe). Arraez would certainly help either cause.
The list of potential fits for Suárez is, as expected, different. The Pirates have already upgraded their lineup by trading for Brandon Lowe and signing Ryan O’Hearn. But this is a team in need of serious pop: Pittsburgh hitters combined to post a league-worst. 350 SLG last season.
Then there’s the Red Sox, who are still searching for an impact bat after failing to re-sign third baseman Alex Bregman. Boston’s current position player group is projected for a bottom-10 WAR in the Majors in 2026; the Tigers, another contender, are one spot worse than the Red Sox in those projections. Suárez may not hit 49 home runs again — Steamer projects him to hit 30, tied for 12th most in their model — but he would give each of these teams another feared slugger.
Wherever they land, Arraez and Suárez bring vastly different skill sets to the table.
