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Ryan Freel headshot

Players · F · RF · 2009 regular season

Ryan Freel

Age
33
B/T
R/R
Height
5' 9"
Weight
180 lb
Number
#6
Born
March 8, 1976 in Jacksonville, FL, United States
MLB debut
April 4, 2001

Compare with…

dbWAR
3.4
Regular season, 2005–2009 only
PA
103
AVG
.193
OBP
.290
SLG
.216
wRC+
41
100 = avg

Ryan Freel was a right fielder for the Kansas City Royals. In 2009 he hit 0 home runs and knocked in 5 RBIs, notching 17 hits across 103 plate appearances in 36 games. His batting average was .193, 26.4% lower than the league average of .262. He reached base at a .290 clip and slugged .216, for an OPS of .506, 32.6% lower than the league mark of .751 — the second worst on his team, and 426th of 432 among MLB batters with 100+ plate appearances. He made contact on 80.8% of his swings. Adjusted for his ballpark and league, his 41 wRC+ puts his offence 59% below average. That comes to -0.4 dbWAR — -7.2 runs with the bat, -0.2 for the ballpark, +0.1 on the bases, +0.8 on double plays, -0.3 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.

wRC+41
wOBA.247
ISO.023
BB%10.7%
WAR-.4

How the WAR is built

Runs above replacement, 2009. These terms sum to -3.9 runs, divided by runs-per-win to give WAR. There is no fielding term.

Batting-7.2Ballpark-0.2Baserunning+0.1Double plays+0.8Position-0.3Replacement+2.9
BattingBallparkBaserunningDouble playsPositionReplacement

WAR by season

2.00.8-0.40506070809

Batting Regular season

Standard and advanced, by season. Regular-season games only. Seasons on file run 2005–2009; his career began in 2001, and earlier seasons are not in this data yet.

Trend
2009KC/CHC/BAL36103170511123.193.290.216.023.26210.7%22.3%.247-7.241-0.4
2008CIN46143390106818.298.340.359.061.3425.6%12.6%.317-1.9870.1
2007CIN7330468316151847.245.308.347.101.2865.9%15.5%.299-9.5730.1
2006CIN129523123827375798.271.363.399.128.33010.9%18.7%.346+4.01022.0
2005CIN101432100421365159.271.371.371.100.31411.8%13.7%.341+3.61031.7

Platoon splits

How he hits left- and right-handed pitching.

Batting by the hand the pitcher throws with, 2009. Counted from play-by-play, so totals can differ from the box-score season line by a plate appearance or two.
SplitPAABHHRBBSOAVGOBPSLGwOBAK%
vs LHP41355048.143.250.171.21319.5%
vs RHP6253120715.226.317.245.27124.2%

Spray chart

Where every ball he put in play landed, 2009.

Loading 58 batted balls…

Hot and cold zones

Batting average by pitch location, 2009.

———.100—7 AB.4449 AB—2 AB.28614 AB—5 AB—5 AB—4 AB.2229 AB.2508 AB
Below averageLeague averageAbove average
Batting average by location of the pitch that ended each plate appearance, catcher's view. The bordered square is the strike zone; the outer band is chase territory. Cells with fewer than 8 at-bats are left grey rather than shown as signal. League average on the same attribution is .262.

Situational hitting

How Ryan Freel hits by base state, outs, score and late-game pressure — each read against his own season line.

Split by
By who is on base when he comes up. The season line is repeated as the baseline.
SituationPAABHHRRBIBBSOAVGOBPSLGwOBA
All situations103——————.193.290.216.247
Bases empty5951900612.176.276.196.234
Runner on first · thin191540136.267.389.333.341
Runners on4437805511.216.310.243.266
RISP252240425.182.250.182.210

Runners on includes runners in scoring position, which is the convention every reference uses. Rows under 25 plate appearances are marked thin — at that size a rate moves several dozen points on one hit. 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.

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Ryan Freel

Similar players

Nearest 2009 seasons by discipline, contact, power and speed, on rate statistics rather than totals.

How these are computed

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.