Could Miami’s Luis Arraez get a rare back-to-back batting title?

If the first one-third of the 2023 MLB season is any indication, Miami Marlins second baseman Luis Arraez will become the first MLB player to win a batting title in one league followed the next year by a batting title in the other league.

Arraez, who won the A.L. batting crown as a member of the Minnesota Twins in 2022, was hitting .399 (games through June 5), 68 points ahead of Freddie Freeman, who is second in the N.L. batting race with a .331 average. The closest to Arraez’s .399 average is the A.L. batting leader Bo Bichette, who is hitting .333.

In his last three games (June 3-5), Arraez has 10 hits in 14 at-bats and has driven in eight runs. He is the first MLB player to collect 10 or more hits and eight or more RBI since Bichette did it in September of last season.

Arraez has 83 hits in 56 games this season. He is on pace for 233 hits for the season. In the Modern Era of baseball (since 1900), there have been 36 players who have collected 230 or more hits in a season. Ichiro Suzuki tops the list with 262 hits in 2004.

MLB history: Most hits in a season since 1900

Here are the Top 10 in most hits in an MLB season since 1900.

262-Ichiro Suzuki, 2004
257-George Sisler, 1920
254-Lefty O’Doul, 1929
254-Bill Terry, 1930
253-Al Simmons, 1925
250-Rogers Hornsby, 1922
248-Ty Cobb, 1911
246-George Sisler, 1922
242-Ichiro Suzuki, 2001

Other than Suzuki’s two seasons in 2001 and 2004, the only other times a player collected 230 or more hits in a season since 2000 was in 2000 when Darin Erstad had 240 hits, and in 2007 when Suzuki had 238 hits.

Nap Lajoie holds the MLB record for highest batting average in a season with .426 in 1901. There have been 13 times when a player batted .400 or better in a season, the last being in 1941 when Ted Williams hit .406 in that ’41 campaign.

Could Luis Arraez challenge the .400 average this season?

With 101 games left to play for the Miami Marlins this season, it’s anyone’s guess whether Luis Arraez will be able to keep up this batting onslaught. The closest any player has gotten to .400 in a season since Williams’ .406 in 1941, was Tony Gwynn in 1994. He hit .394 that season. George Brett was 10 points short in 1980 when he hit .390, and Rod Carew ended the 1977 season with a .388 average. Ted Williams in 1957 hit .388, the second time he hit .380 or better in a season.

One final stat: Of all MLB players with 200 or more hits since 2021, Arraez has the highest batting average in that timeframe with a .323 average. Freddie Freeman is second at .316. Since he came into the league in 2019, Arraez has the highest average of all players with 300 or more hits with a .325 average.