Luis Arraez trade gave Edouard Julien a shot with Twins; he showed his value in Game 4

The guidelines for Major League Baseball require 502 plate appearances to qualify for the batting races. That is an average of 3.1 plate appearances for the 162-game schedule.

There were 10 hitters combined in both leagues reaching that standard and batting .300. The fact that Luis Arraez managed to hit .354 for Miami in this pitching-dominated era was remarkable.

Arraez, the AL winner at .316 for the Twins in 2022, reached career highs in games played (147), plate appearances (617), home runs (10) and RBI (69).

Turning 27 next April, Arraez was brilliant in year one for the Marlins. The attempts of Twins comment posters to degrade his contributions are asinine.

His value as a player turned into a trade that gave the Twins a pitching ace, Pablo López, to help walk away in the lowly AL Central, win a wild-card series vs. Toronto and give them what was a fighting chance against favored Houston in the division series.

And what has made the deal extra-rewarding was the arrival of Edouard Julien, a second baseman in theory, a hitter in fact.

On Wednesday night at Target Field, the Twins were in survival mode against the reigning World Series champion. After getting one run and three hits a Game 3 loss, the Twins needed some serious hitting.

Nope.

They were held to three hits again, and Julien had two of those: a leadoff double in the first and an other-way home run in the sixth.

Nice try, rookie, but Astros 3, Twins 2, and gone in four games.

Julien, 25 next April, can't be considered a surprise, since there had to be exceptional hitting potential for the Twins to pony up $493,000 to sign Julien as an 18^th-round draft choice out of Auburn in 2020.

Derek Falvey, the Twins' baseball boss, explained that this summer: "Eddie told teams he was going back to Auburn if he didn't get a $500,000 bonus. We saved some money with the higher picks. The best we could do under the rules was $493,000.''

That was close enough for the French-speaker from Quebec City.

Joey Gallo went on the injured list on April 12 and Julien was called up. He stayed for nine days and then Jorge Polanco was activated.

Julien returned to stay with the Twins on May 20. During that month in St. Paul, I was at CHS Field for a Saints game. Randy Dobnak's sinkerball produced three ground balls early that were within Julien's reach. He fielded none, receiving only one official error.

A message was sent to a Twins official expressing serious apprehension about Julien's fielding. The response was: "He has work to do, but he'll do that.''

Batting leadoff as the designated hitter has remained Julien's best spot in the batting order, but that suggestion turned out to be true:

Julien did put in enough work that he was fielding ground balls in a satisfactory manner by the final weeks of the season.

Other than being left-handed, he's been a 180-degree change from Arraez. He draws walks (64), hits home runs (16) and strikeouts (128) with much frequency. Arraez's numbers in 200 more plate appearances in those categories were 35, 10 and 34.

The Ks are Julien's problem, since an astounding 54 of those were looking. That's an enormous number, even on a team that set a major league record for strikeouts (1,654).

Assuming human umpires continue calling strikes in 2024, Julien will have to lower his opinion on his zone knowledge and swing at more two-strike pitches a few centimeters off the corner.

Here was the No. 1 surprise on Julien this week. Manager Rocco Baldelli was asked about the completely stoical appearance that Julien almost always is wearing in dugout TV shots.

Baldelli smiled and gave this animated response:

"It's funny because visually sometimes that's what it looks like, but he's probably interacting with more people than anyone throughout the day — I swear to you.

"I mean, I'm not making this up … He might not be initiating all those interactions, but there's a lot of people looking for him, and they have a good time with him. So there's a lot more going on there than he lets on a lot of the time.

"People are probably having more fun being around Eddie Julien than any other player in our clubhouse on a daily basis. I don't think that's changed too much. I think Eddie's enjoying everything going on right now in a big way.

"I like watching him play. He's a good player. What an unusual player. And just a different kind of guy to have in the clubhouse. You don't see guys like him very often come around, because he's also a little bit of a character.''

There's a similarity to Arraez beyond getting on base. Luis also was in the middle of things in the clubhouse with the Twins.

What Arraez didn't have here was Pablo Lopez to pitch big games.