Orlando Arcia's misunderstood skill set

The Atlanta Braves are running out of reasons to keep running Orlando Arcia out there

The 2024 season was embarrassingly bad for Orlando Arcia.

The 30-year-old, coming off of an All-Star selection in 2023 where he faded down the stretch, keep fading like that picture of Marty’s in Back to the Future last season. Arcia hit just .218 with a .625 OPS last year and as we’ve discussed before, many many times, some of the situational stats were even worse.

• RISP = .155 BA, .400 OPS

• Men on base = .198 BA, .544 OPS

• Runners on 1st and 3rd = .067, .277 OPS

• Runners on 2nd and 3rd = .100, .414 OPS

• Runner on 3rd, <2 outs = .048, .277 OPS

But Alex Anthopoulos has thoughts on this.

The org’s President of Baseball Operations has told us, many times now, that Arcia’s really there to bat 9th and provide steady defense. The lack of a decent bat hurts the team when injuries have forced him to bat as high as 5th.¹

But this idea, that Arcia can sit down in the bottom of the lineup, provide steadily good defense, and whatever you get with the bat is a bonus, has somehow been misconstrued as a belief that Arcia’s some sort of elite defender that more than makes up for his anemic bat.

It came up on the podcast, in fact, on Thursday. I was talking about Nick Allen being back in the lineup and asking if there should be a position battle between the two, breaking down the pros and cons of each player.

And one of the responses was this:

And I feel driven to make a clarification:

Orlando Arcia is not an elite defender.

Louder, for those in back:

ORLANDO ARCIA IS NOT AN ELITE DEFENDER

Let’s talk about it.

First, his defensive rankings

Two things can be true at once:

Orlando Arcia grades out well at defense, but he’s not elite.

Arcia’s put up a combined +6 Fielding Run Value in 2,591 innings at short over the last two seasons. Considering that RV is an accumulation stat - the more you play, the higher (or lower) your Run Value can get - having only six RV when you play virtually every day isn’t actually that impressive. He’s clearly good, but he’s not in the same tier as some of the elite defenders.

To expand on this, I separated guys into elite, good, average, and bad based on their RV as compared to the rest of qualifiers. For shortstops, there’s clear delineations between the six guys with elite defense, the five guys with good defense, the seven guys with average-ish defense, and the one guy that’s atrocious

In 2024, Arcia’s +3 OAA was tied for 10th in all of baseball among shortstops, clearly at the bottom of the 2nd tier of defenders.

2023 is a similar story. While the delineations between tiers aren’t quite as obvious², Arcia’s once again in the middle of the second grouping of good but not great shortstops.

And again, workload matters. Arcia had the 12th-most innings in 2023 and the 7th-most innings in 2024, so it’s even less impressive when he’s being beaten out in OAA by guys who played fewer innings than him (Corey Seager, at +4 despite only 959 innings) or lapped him multiple times despite a similar workload (the entire elite group).

On a rate basis, Arcia’s been worth exactly one extra percent of Success Rate added in each of the last two seasons,

But just a score isn’t enough - where does Arcia do well and where does he struggle?

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His range is really good despite a lack of speed

I’m going to be honest, I don’t fully understand how he does this, but he does.

Orlando Arcia is not a fast player - last season, his average sprint speed of 25.6 ft/sec was only 13th percentile in baseball and was slower than 35-year-old catcher Travis d’Arnaud’s 25.7 ft/sec.³

A lot of Arcia’s success appears to be a combination of good reactions and positioning. When he’s not shaded, Arcia’s starting depth of 147 feet from home plate establishes him as one of MLB’s shallowest defenders - Javy Báez takes the crown at just 145 feet - while league average is closer to 149 and some players are as far back as 151 feet (Dansby Swanson)

But when he’s shaded up the middle, which typically results in defenders playing closer to home plate, Arcia’s still just as deep as he was - he’s still at 147 feet. This gives him more time to get to balls that would have eluded his glove were he playing at Báez’s shaded depth of 144 feet or even Trey Sweeney’s 142 feet.

And the Braves shade their infielders enough for this to matter. MLB average for shading an infielder is around 22%. Atlanta’s at 24.7% overall, but against lefty hitters, it’s almost 50% of the time.

Here’s the chart - see how Arcia’s so deep up the middle in those situations? Edge of the grass-type stuff there and much deeper than a lot of shortstops.

Atlanta’s defensive positioning in 2024, via MLB Statcast

Is it his arm?

Short answer: No.

Detailed answer: His arm is strong, but it’s more covering up for a lack of speed than it is adding additional value. He gets to a batted ball later in its travel than other shortstops, but his arm strength allows the throw to get to first base at roughly the same time as a guy with a weaker arm who got to the ball earlier.

Arcia’s average arm strength last season was 86.3 mph, good for 17th out of 60 among qualified shortstops (minimum 50 throws). But despite the above-average arm strength, his arm has added exactly +1 Fielder Runs in his career, mainly through a lack of runners advancing on him.⁴

So what’s the solution here?

Making shortstop a priority in 2026, that’s what.

We’ve discussed how this season is vitally important towards figuring out if Nacho Alvarez can play shortstop. My inclination is no, one that is shared across much of the prospect apparatus.

Nacho Alvarez is Atlanta's Most Important Prospect for 2025

Similarly, a lot of the lower-level defenders just won’t be ready next year. John Gil is considered the best infield defender in the system, and he finished last year with 39 games in Single-A Augusta.

Either Arcia figures it out at the plate or next season’s probably a legitimate position battle between Nick Allen and Orlando Arcia with an outside shot of Atlanta attempting to acquire a top shortstop - Bo Bichette’s a free agent, if you’re into that sort of thing.

But shortstop’s a position that is exceptionally hard to fill in free agency without paying a lot of money. Just look at the shortstop market in recent offseasons:

Courtesy MLBTR Contract Database

Every two-way shortstop on that list either got over $22M/year in free agency or was an internal extension, both of which won’t really be options for Atlanta unless someone locks Alex Anthopoulos in a broom closet when free agency opens.

No, Orlando Arcia’s value proposition is that he’s reliably above-average with the glove. Not elite, but good enough.

Can that offset the drag on his value that being one of the worst hitters in baseball for a second consecutive year would bring?

In Tim Hyers we trust, I guess.

Here's what Tim Hyers told us about being Atlanta's new hitting coach

1. Which he did sixteen times last season

2. Where does elite stop, at ten? at nine?

3. Other players faster than Orlando Arcia on last year’s roster: Marcell Ozuna, Jorge Soler. Really.

4. In 96 career advance opportunities, runners have advanced 30% of the time against an estimated rate of 38%….but even that’s misleading as a career number, because they advanced 2% more than estimated last season. This number’s been trending down over recent years.