What Luis Arraez is doing should be impossible in baseball today.

He has now gone over a full calendar month without striking out. Arraez's last strikeout was on Aug. 10. That's 28 games ago. He has taken 124 plate appearances since then, and seen 445 pitches. Zero have yielded a K.

"Everybody hates strikeouts," the Padres star summed it up recently. "But especially me."

Arraez's hatred of the K is fueling a historic stretch that would seem to belong in any era of MLB history but this one, when pitchers are the nastiest and strikeouts are the highest that they've ever been. Arraez is the unicorn. He's become impossible to strike out.

Entering Friday's series opener against the Giants, Arraez has played his last 27 games completely strikeout-free. Let's break down exactly what he's been doing in those games. (He had four extra plate appearances on Aug. 10 after his last strikeout, but so we can compare him to the rest of the league, we'll start with the first clean game on Aug. 11.)

Arraez has seen 116 two-strike pitches during this stretch. Not a single one has become Strike 3. He has swung at 91 of those two-strike pitches. He hasn't missed once.

We can dive even deeper into those results. Here are five keys to Arraez's strikeout-less streak.

1) He'll see a strike … but then he jumps on you

You can get Strike 1 on Arraez, but that's all part of his plan. It's a lot harder to get Strike 2 to even put Arraez into a potential strikeout situation.

As MLB.com Padres reporter AJ Cassavell pointed out this week, Arraez actually isn't a big first-pitch swinger. During these 27 games without a K, he's taken the first pitch 83% of the time, making him one of the most patient first-pitch hitters in baseball over that stretch.

But it's only for one pitch -- and it's by design. As Arraez explains it, he wants to see what a pitcher has. Then he lets it rip. After the first pitch, Arraez gets a lot more aggressive, and once he's swinging, his bat control is so good that he's probably putting the ball in play.

Here's a good example from a few days ago: Arraez calmly took a first-pitch 97 mph fastball from George Kirby for a called strike on the inside edge of the plate … but when Kirby came after him again with another 97 mph fastball on the next pitch, and it leaked out over the plate, Arraez jumped on it and smacked a line-drive base hit.

Over the last month, even with all those first-pitch takes, 57% of Arraez's plate appearances have been decided before two strikes, a top-10 mark in the Majors among hitters who've batted at least 100 times. Even more reflective of his approach to hitting: 40% of Arraez's plate appearances have been decided with one strike specifically -- after that first take but before he reaches a strikeout count -- tied with Nico Hoerner for the highest mark of any hitter.

But even though he's been in strikeout situations at one of the lowest frequencies in the league, that's still nearly half of Arraez's plate appearances that have gone to two strikes. And that's where his top-of-the-class contact ability really shines.

2) He redefines "protecting the plate"

You can usually get Strike 1 on Arraez. You can sometimes get Strike 2. You can never get Strike 3.

Arraez in two-strike counts is like no hitter in baseball. He protects everything.

Arraez's swing rate by count
During streak of no-strikeout games

• 0-strike counts: 21%
• 1-strike counts: 60%
• 2-strike counts: 78%

As the count moves from zero strikes to two strikes, pitchers are facing three different Arraezes. Once he gets close to a K, he's not letting anything get by.

Arraez has swung at over three quarters of the two-strike pitches he's faced during his streak. He is protecting the plate with two strikes at the most aggressive rate in the Major Leagues.

Highest swing rate in 2-strike counts since 8/11
Hitters with 100+ 2-strike pitches faced

1. Luis Arraez: 78%
2. Sal Frelick: 76%
3. Ceddanne Rafaela: 74%
4. Cody Bellinger: 73%
5. Andrés Giménez: 72%

That goes especially for borderline pitches. Arraez has swung at 90% of the borderline pitches he's seen with two strikes over the last month -- those are pitches within one baseball's width of the edges of the strike zone, either inside the zone or out of the zone, where the call could go either way, ball or strike. The only hitters with higher marks over the same period are José Ramírez (95%) and Colton Cowser (92%).

Arraez has been thrown 60 borderline two-strike pitches since Aug. 11. He's put 32 of those in play -- including 10 for hits. He's fouled off another 22 to keep his at-bat alive. And he's taken the remaining six for balls.

Before two strikes? Arraez has only swung at 36% of those same borderline pitches. But when it comes time to protect the plate, Arraez will do so at all costs. He goes from swinging at less than four of every 10 borderline pitches to swinging at nine out of 10.

Arraez incredibly successful at protecting the plate with two strikes. Case in point: He's fouled off 37% of all the two-strike pitches he's seen since the start of his no-strikeout game streak. No one has spoiled more two-strike pitches by fouling them off than Arraez over that time.

3) He has the shortest 2-strike swing in the league

Arraez protecting the plate is different than any other hitter trying to protect the plate. He has a swing uniquely designed to get the bat directly to the ball.

We can use Statcast's new bat tracking data to show it. Arraez has the shortest swing in baseball, and he uses that swing to connect the sweet spot of the bat to the baseball at the highest rate of any hitter.

But most importantly for his streak of not striking out: Arraez has the shortest two-strike swing in baseball. Arraez's average swing length in two-strike counts is just 5.9 feet -- both for the 2024 season overall and during his streak. He's the only hitter whose barrel travels less than six feet to get to the baseball.

Hitters with shortest 2-strike swings in 2024

• Luis Arraez -- 5.9 feet
• Brice Turang -- 6.2 feet
• Alex Verdugo -- 6.3 feet
• Justin Turner -- 6.3 feet
• Nolan Schanuel -- 6.4 feet
• Steven Kwan -- 6.5 feet

MLB avg. 2-strike swing -- 7.3 feet

Arraez's swing with two strikes is almost a foot and a half shorter than an average big league hitter. It's even about half a foot shorter than his fellow contact king, Steven Kwan, and other star hitters with quick bat paths like Corey Seager and Freddie Freeman.

And it's over two and a half feet shorter than the hitters with the longest swings, which are exactly who you might expect -- Javier Báez (8.6 feet) and Giancarlo Stanton (8.5 feet).

Over the last month, the longest swing Arraez has had in any two-strike count is 7.3 feet. So he has taken exactly zero two-strike swings that are longer than the Major League average -- whether it's a high pitch or low pitch, inside pitch or outside pitch, fastball, breaking ball or offspeed. Seventy-nine of Arraez's 86 swings with two strikes have been under seven feet long.

And his shortest swing to protect the plate with two strikes? Just 3.8 feet -- to fight off a 95 mph heater at his eyes against the Rockies' Bradley Blalock on Aug. 18.

4) His elite bat-to-ball skill gets even better with 2 strikes

Arraez's swing is so compact that you simply cannot get a pitch by him to put him away, no matter where you throw it.

Arraez already has the lowest swing-and-miss rate in baseball to begin with. He whiffs on just 7% of the swings he takes regardless of the situation.

But with two strikes, he somehow whiffs even less. Arraez's two-strike swing-and-miss rate for the season is 5.5%. It is, easily, the lowest two-strike swing-and-miss rate in baseball.

Lowest 2-strike whiff rate, 2024
Hitters with 250+ 2-strike swings

• Luis Arraez -- 5.5%
• Steven Kwan -- 9.7%
• Nico Hoerner -- 11.6%
• Sal Frelick -- 11.7%
• Mookie Betts -- 12.0%

During his streak, of course, Arraez's two-strike whiff rate is a perfect 0.0%. No matter how far off the plate the pitch is. Here he is spoiling a 90 mph cutter from Austin Warren that was eight inches off the inside part of the plate … and a 90 mph changeup from Dennis Santana that was a foot off the plate outside. Arraez's plate coverage is unparalleled.

Even when Arraez has to reach down literally into the dirt to stay alive, he keeps his swing compact and gets his bat on the ball.

In the ninth inning on Aug. 28, Arraez flared an opposite-field double on a 1-2 slider from Cardinals closer Ryan Helsley that was just eight inches off the ground when it reached the strike zone. Arraez's swing length was just 7.0 feet -- on a swing where his bat scraped the ground in front of the plate on his follow-through.

5) He's gotten lucky … twice

Even the savant of making contact isn't completely perfect. A month-long streak of not striking out takes a little bit of luck, even for Arraez.

We already know Arraez almost never lets a close pitch go by with two strikes. But he does take a few times.

Normally those are confident takes -- the pitch is technically close, but clearly off the plate. But during his streak, he's taken two pitches that could have been called Strike 3.

The first one was on Aug. 20 against the Twins' Bailey Ober, whose 2-2 slider may have clipped the bottom of the strike zone.

The second was on Aug. 31 against the Rays' Hunter Bigge, who fired an 0-2, 98 mph fastball to the bottom edge that also could have gone against Arraez.

But it didn't. And really, Arraez tends to make his own luck at the plate. No one else could do this but him.