MINNEAPOLIS -- Luis Arraez isn't shy to admit it: During this shortened season, he hopes he has a chance to accomplish something special. A batting title would be great. Hitting .400? Well, that would be even better.

"That’s one of my goals," said the 23-year-old on Sunday.

Some may say that's lofty talk for a player with only 366 plate appearances at the Major League level, but there's nothing wrong with setting your sights high -- especially heading into an unprecedented 60-game regular season during which the small sample size could lead to some extreme statistical outliers among hitters and pitchers.

And, in that case, why not Arraez? It seems that the young second baseman has about as good a claim to that potential as anyone in the league right now.

He is, after all, the kid who never hit lower than than .309 at any level of the Minors as he rose through the organization. That includes a .347 mark with the Class A affiliate in Cedar Rapids, a .324 clip at Class A Advanced Fort Myers, .318 at Double-A Pensacola, .348 in a pair of brief stops at Triple-A, and, of course, his .334 average as a Major League rookie in 2019.

His career average in the Majors has never dipped below .332. Last July 6, exactly a year ago Monday, Arraez was hitting .405 after his first 25 career games.

The underlying metrics also paint a rosy picture for the young slap hitter with the keen eye at the plate. Arraez's whiff rate of 7.9 percent was the lowest in the Majors last season among hitters with at least 250 plate appearances, while his line-drive rate of 32.3 percent also ranked him sixth among that group. Simply put, his average won't be dragged down by those pesky strikeouts, and when he puts the ball in play, it's often on a line somewhere.

It's worth noting that the quality of Arraez's contact only put his expected batting average at .290 last season -- behind even teammate Nelson Cruz -- but fluctuations related to sample size should certainly be more of a factor this year.

"It's definitely possible," Twins manager Rocco Baldelli said of the possibility of a .400 hitter this season. "There will be a lot of ways to look at this season and dice it up. People will be quick to say in some ways that it’s not a normal year. Of course it’s not a normal year; we all know that. But what you will see are some pretty cool things, and some things that will be very memorable."

One question Baldelli raises is whether any of these potential achievements would be considered legitimate in a shortened season. They're perhaps not going to stack up against full-season records of other years, but the Twins' skipper also feels that any such accomplishments that occur in the trying circumstances of this season should also be held in esteem in their own right.

"The guys that go out there and get the job done in this kind of environment, it says something very special about them," Baldelli said. "So instead of just looking at it in kind of an alternative or negative light, there are really interesting ways we’re going to look back on this year when all is said and done."

If Arraez were to somehow accomplish the feat, he would join only two other players in Twins history who hit .400 or better in a 60-game stretch during a single season, according to the Elias Sports Bureau: Rod Carew (1974 and '77) and Joe Mauer (2006, '09 and '10).

Arraez has done his part to stay ready. Following a relatively slow Spring Training during which he went just 3-for-29 at the plate, he remained around the Twins' Minor League complex in Fort Myers, Fla., with his wife and daughter, to train alongside several teammates. He took some live at-bats against prospect Jhoan Duran, who also threw at the facility. (Arraez claims that Duran threw a fastball at 102 mph.)

In any case, nobody really knows what this season has in store for anyone around the league -- and that unpredictability might very well be a positive for outliers like Arraez. For his part, he's just trying to stay healthy and let the consistency of his bat do the talking.

"If hitting .400 happens, that’s a good thing for me," Arraez said. "But for me, too, and for my teammates, just winning the World Series -- that's important."