WASHINGTON -- No season -- even the best, truly historic campaigns -- can be perfect. Baseball is just too difficult, too grueling, too fundamentally rooted in failure. Whether team or player, even the most pristine seasons will come with their blips. Maybe Marlins second baseman Luis Arraez is already past his.

Because after enduring a season-high hitless stretch that spanned the past three games, Arraez resumed his march toward history in emphatic fashion in Miami’s 6-5 win over the Nationals on Friday at Nationals Park.

Arraez -- who was hitting .402 as recently as last weekend -- homered as part of a five-hit night to raise his batting average back to .390 in the team’s 70th game of 2023. He drove in three runs and scored twice before Yuli Gurriel scored the decisive run from second on Garrett Cooper’s go-ahead pinch-hit infield single in the eighth, helping the Marlins salvage another shaky Sandy Alcantara start.

“Baseball is hard, hitting .400 is hard -- but it’s not impossible,” Arraez said. “I want to get a hit every at-bat.”

Nobody has hit .400 over the course of a full season since Ted Williams in 1941, or come as close since as Tony Gwynn’s .394 mark in the strike-shortened 1994 season. Indeed, many thought this might be the week Arraez’s early-season quest for .400 finally fizzled. And perhaps it was. Even after his big night Friday, Arraez would need to rattle off four more consecutive hits or bat at a .500 clip over his next 22 at-bats to reach .400 -- in the short term, anyway.

The season, however, stretches on for 3 1/2 more months. So maybe all Arraez needs is to get hot again, and maintain. Friday’s effort put him legitimately back within striking distance, and certainly in a better position than he was even a few hours prior. Arraez arrived at Nationals Park on Friday hitting .378 -- his lowest batting average entering a game since June 2 (.374). He finished the day 12 points higher, bridging the gap on five swings.

“Five-for-five,” Arraez said. “This is beautiful.”

Arraez singled to lead off the game, cracked a two-run homer to right field in his second at-bat, and added three more singles in his next three at-bats, including an RBI single in the fourth. Arraez’s second five-hit game of ‘23 made him the second player in franchise history to achieve that feat multiple times in a season, along with Juan Pierre in 2005. It also spring-boarded him back into a tie with Bo Bichette for the MLB lead in hits, with 96. The next closest National League player is Ronald Acuña Jr. with 92.

Acuña also ranks second behind Arraez in MLB in batting average. His .327 mark is 63 points behind Arraez, who captured the 2022 AL batting title with Minnesota. Arraez also leads MLB in on-base percentage, at .441.

“What he's doing is special,” Nationals starter Trevor Williams said. “To get five hits like he did today and to stay off good pitches from the relievers, he's a really good hitter. When you game plan for a hitter like that, you see the .380, you see the .400 and you say, 'Well, he's going to get his hits.' … That's the type of hitter he is. He's a great add to that lineup.”

The last time Arraez was above .400 was at the end of play on June 10, hitting .402 after the Marlins’ win over the White Sox. He then went 1-for-17 over his next four games, including 0-for-12 across the club’s three-game series in Seattle. That series marked the first time all year Arraez had failed to record a hit in three straight games.

“He feels like when he has a little bit of a funk, [that’s when] he’s going to get really hot,” manager Skip Schumaker said. “He went 0-for-15 or whatever it was, and today he came in and said he’s going to get four [hits]. He says that every day.

"A lot of guys think 0-for-15 can become 0-for-19. He’s the guy who thinks he’s going to get really hot when he has slumps. That’s the difference in the mindset, from the elite guys and the guys who are fearing failure.”