Players · S · LF · 2009 regular season
Gary Sheffield
- Age
- 41
- B/T
- R/R
- Height
- 6' 0"
- Weight
- 215 lb
- Number
- #10
- Born
- November 18, 1968 in Tampa, FL, United States
- MLB debut
- September 3, 1988
- dbWAR
- 8.5 Regular season, 2005–2009 only
- PA
- 312
- AVG
- .276
- OBP
- .372
- SLG
- .451
- wRC+
- 124 100 = avg
Gary Sheffield was a left fielder for the New York Mets. In 2009 he hit 10 home runs and knocked in 43 RBIs, notching 74 hits across 312 plate appearances in 100 games. His batting average was .276, 5.2% higher than the league average of .262. He reached base at a .372 clip and slugged .451, for an OPS of .823, 9.7% higher than the league mark of .751 — 5th of 16 on his team, and 93rd of 432 among MLB batters with 100+ plate appearances. He made contact on 85.6% of his swings. Adjusted for his ballpark and league, his 124 wRC+ puts his offence 24% above average. That comes to 1.1 dbWAR — +8.1 runs with the bat, +0.3 for the ballpark, -0.2 on the bases, -1.9 on double plays, -3.7 for the position he plays, against replacement level. It includes no fielding: defensive runs are proprietary and are not estimated here, so the figure credits playing a demanding position but not playing it well.
League context
Percentile among qualified batters, 2009 regular season.
How the WAR is built
Runs above replacement, 2009. These terms sum to +11.2 runs, divided by runs-per-win to give WAR. There is no fielding term.
WAR by season
Batting Regular season
Standard and advanced, by season. Regular-season games only — postseason games are listed separately below. Seasons on file run 2005–2009; his career began in 1988, and earlier seasons are not in this data yet.
| Trend | |||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2009 | NYM | 100 | 312 | 74 | 10 | 43 | 2 | 40 | 46 | .276 | .372 | .451 | .175 | .299 | 12.8% | 14.7% | .365 | +8.1 | 124 | 1.1 | |
| 2008 | DET | 114 | 482 | 94 | 19 | 57 | 9 | 58 | 83 | .225 | .326 | .400 | .175 | .237 | 12.0% | 17.2% | .327 | -2.4 | 94 | -0.2 | |
| 2007 | DET | 133 | 593 | 131 | 25 | 75 | 22 | 84 | 71 | .265 | .378 | .462 | .196 | .262 | 14.2% | 12.0% | .374 | +18.8 | 124 | 2.5 | |
| 2006 | NYY | 39 | 166 | 45 | 6 | 25 | 5 | 13 | 16 | .298 | .355 | .450 | .152 | .300 | 7.8% | 9.6% | .351 | +2.0 | 113 | 0.4 | |
| 2005 | NYY | 153 | 675 | 170 | 34 | 123 | 10 | 78 | 76 | .291 | .379 | .512 | .221 | .284 | 11.6% | 11.3% | .387 | +31.5 | 137 | 4.7 |
Separate from the regular season
Postseason Postseason
Wild Card through World Series. These games are counted on their own: none of them are in the regular-season tables, career totals, league context, leaderboards or dbWAR on this page.
Postseason batting
| Season | Team | Round | G | PA | AB | R | H | 2B | 3B | HR | RBI | BB | SO | SB | AVG | OBP | SLG | OPS |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2006 Post | NYY | ALDS | 3 | 12 | 12 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 4 | 0 | .083 | .083 | .083 | .167 |
| 2005 Post | NYY | ALDS | 5 | 22 | 21 | 1 | 6 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 0 | .286 | .318 | .286 | .604 |
| 2005–2009 | Postseason total · 2 Octobers | 8 | 34 | 33 | 2 | 7 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 1 | 6 | 0 | .212 | .235 | .212 | .447 |
Box-score and rate statistics only. wOBA, wRC+, FIP and dbWAR are measured against a full league season, and a postseason is a few teams playing each other for a month, so they are not computed for October.
Platoon splits
How he hits left- and right-handed pitching.
| Split | PA | AB | H | HR | BB | SO | AVG | OBP | SLG | wOBA | K% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| vs LHP | 96 | 85 | 25 | 3 | 11 | 11 | .294 | .375 | .459 | .365 | 11.5% |
| vs RHP | 216 | 183 | 49 | 7 | 29 | 35 | .268 | .370 | .448 | .365 | 16.2% |
Spray chart
Where every ball he put in play landed, 2009.
Loading 209 batted balls…
Hot and cold zones
Batting average by pitch location, 2009.
Situational hitting
How Gary Sheffield hits by base state, outs, score and late-game pressure — each read against his own season line.
| Situation | PA | AB | H | HR | RBI | BB | SO | AVG | OBP | SLG | wOBA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| All situations | 312 | — | — | — | — | — | — | .276 | .372 | .451 | .365 |
| Bases empty | 144 | 127 | 38 | 6 | 6 | 17 | 18 | .299 | .382 | .504 | .392 |
| Runner on first | 66 | 58 | 12 | 0 | 2 | 7 | 12 | .207 | .303 | .276 | .275 |
| Runners on | 168 | 141 | 36 | 4 | 37 | 23 | 28 | .255 | .363 | .404 | .341 |
| RISP | 102 | 83 | 24 | 4 | 35 | 16 | 16 | .289 | .402 | .494 | .386 |
Runners on includes runners in scoring position, which is the convention every reference uses. Counted from play-by-play, 2009.
Not in the 2009 data: exit velocity and launch angle, first recorded in 2015. The play-by-play goes back to 2005, but the measurements on each pitch and batted ball arrived later, so the panels built from them are left off this season.
Compare Gary Sheffield with…
Side by side with up to three others.
Similar players
Nearest 2009 seasons by discipline, contact, power and speed, on rate statistics rather than totals.
wOBA uses linear weights measured from this season's own play-by-play rather than published constants, and wRC+ is park-adjusted against that same league. dbWAR is our own open implementation — not fWAR or bWAR — and the full derivation, including its simplifications, is on the methodology page.