Here’s how Arraez could be halfway to .400

Is Luis Arraez halfway to a .400 season?

No, it’s not really quite that simple. But depending on how you look at the numbers, you could certainly make the case that the Marlins’ second baseman -- who will be starting for the NL in next Tuesday’s All-Star Game in Seattle -- is at the midway point in his pursuit of that hallowed baseball mark.

It’s not just that we’re roughly 50 percent of the way through the season, though we are. The All-Star break is approaching. Every team has now passed the 81-game mark, including the Marlins, who played their 87th game on Tuesday, a 15-2 blowout of the Cardinals in which Arraez went 1-for-3, leaving his average at .387.

Here is a look at how this math could play out.

Let’s say Arraez finishes the season with 600 at-bats.

That assumes nearly perfect health, of course, which is much easier said than done. FanGraphs’ ZiPS projections, for one, forecasted him to finish with only 560 (and a .363 average) entering Tuesday.

And in a way, a little bit of missed time might actually be beneficial to Arraez’s chase -- though not the Marlins’ playoff chances -- assuming no lingering effects once he returns. The lower the at-bat total, the easier it theoretically should be to maintain any outlier stat (as long as Arraez still reaches the 502 at-bats needed to qualify). If that is what happens, then Arraez could already be well past the halfway point.

But let’s say he stays in the lineup nearly every day. To this point, Arraez is averaging almost exactly four at-bats per start when he bats leadoff, which he has done in every game since June 1. (Earlier in the season, he started 34 games batting third, six batting fourth and one batting second, and collectively averaged 3.88 at-bats in those contests.) The Marlins have 75 games remaining and figure to keep Arraez in the lineup as much as possible, as they fight for a postseason berth. Given his current total of 310 at-bats, if Arraez starts 73 of those games and sticks at leadoff, his pace would get him to 602 at-bats. We can round to 600 from there.

What would 600 at-bats require?

This is pretty straightforward. If Arraez finishes with exactly 600 at-bats, then 240 hits would get him to a .400 average, on the dot.

While nobody in the AL or NL has batted .400 since the great Ted Williams in 1941, a 240-hit season is almost as rare. In that same timeframe, just three players have done it: Ichiro Suzuki in 2001 and '04, Darin Erstad in 2000 and Wade Boggs in 1985. (The latter two finished with exactly 240.)

Williams, in his .400 season, notched “only” 185 hits. How? That’s a little about the schedule being 154 games long back then, compared with 162 now. But it’s a lot about the Splendid Splinter, with his famously keen eye, drawing an MLB-high 147 walks. Arraez is a completely different sort of hitter. His two-walk game on Tuesday was only his second of the season, and in a way, that only makes a steep challenge steeper.

What does he need from here?

You probably don’t have to pick up a calculator for this one. If Arraez ends up needing 240 hits to reach .400, then 120 hits is the halfway point to history.

That 120th hit came on Tuesday afternoon, a line drive up the middle for a first-inning single off St. Louis starter Adam Wainwright, setting the stage for Jesús Sánchez’s three-run homer later in that opening frame.

The road to .400 is long and unforgiving. But if things break right for Arraez, 50 percent of it is now behind him.