Players · M · DH · 2012 regular season
Hideki Matsui
- Age
- 38
- B/T
- L/R
- Height
- 6' 2"
- Weight
- 210 lb
- Number
- #55
- Born
- June 12, 1974 in Kanazawa, Japan
- MLB debut
- March 31, 2003
- dbWAR
- 13.8 Regular season, 2005–2012 only
- PA
- 103
- AVG
- .147
- OBP
- .214
- SLG
- .221
- wRC+
- 17 100 = avg
Hideki Matsui was a designated hitter for the Tampa Bay Rays. In 2012 he hit 2 home runs and knocked in 7 RBIs, notching 14 hits across 103 plate appearances in 33 games. His batting average was .147, 42.1% lower than the league average of .255. He reached base at a .214 clip and slugged .221, for an OPS of .435, 40.0% lower than the league mark of .724 — the worst on his team, and 456th of 459 among MLB batters with 100+ plate appearances. He made contact on 76.3% of his swings. Adjusted for his ballpark and league, his 17 wRC+ puts his offence 83% below average. That comes to -1.0 dbWAR — -9.8 runs with the bat, +0.2 for the ballpark, -0.1 on the bases, -0.8 on double plays, -1.7 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, 2012 regular season.
How the WAR is built
Runs above replacement, 2012. These terms sum to -9.3 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 2005–2012; his career began in 2003, and earlier seasons are not in this data yet.
| Trend | |||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2012 | TB | 33 | 103 | 14 | 2 | 7 | 0 | 8 | 22 | .147 | .214 | .221 | .074 | .169 | 7.8% | 21.4% | .198 | -9.8 | 17 | -1.0 | |
| 2011 | OAK | 141 | 585 | 130 | 12 | 72 | 1 | 56 | 84 | .251 | .321 | .375 | .124 | .274 | 9.6% | 14.4% | .311 | -4.2 | 95 | 0.1 | |
| 2010 | LAA | 144 | 558 | 132 | 21 | 84 | 0 | 67 | 98 | .274 | .361 | .459 | .185 | .302 | 12.0% | 17.6% | .363 | +16.6 | 131 | 2.2 | |
| 2009 | NYY | 142 | 528 | 125 | 28 | 90 | 0 | 64 | 75 | .274 | .367 | .509 | .235 | .273 | 12.1% | 14.2% | .385 | +22.4 | 137 | 2.9 | |
| 2008 | NYY | 93 | 378 | 99 | 9 | 45 | 0 | 38 | 47 | .294 | .370 | .424 | .131 | .320 | 10.1% | 12.4% | .354 | +6.4 | 113 | 0.9 | |
| 2007 | NYY | 143 | 634 | 156 | 25 | 103 | 4 | 73 | 73 | .285 | .367 | .488 | .203 | .285 | 11.5% | 11.5% | .374 | +20.5 | 124 | 3.5 | |
| 2006 | NYY | 50 | 201 | 52 | 8 | 29 | 1 | 27 | 23 | .302 | .393 | .494 | .192 | .308 | 13.4% | 11.4% | .387 | +8.5 | 137 | 1.2 | |
| 2005 | NYY | 162 | 704 | 192 | 23 | 116 | 2 | 63 | 78 | .305 | .367 | .496 | .191 | .315 | 8.9% | 11.1% | .374 | +25.3 | 128 | 4.0 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2009 Post | NYY | Postseason total | 15 | 52 | 43 | 5 | 15 | 2 | 0 | 4 | 13 | 9 | 10 | 0 | .349 | .462 | .674 | 1.136 |
| ALDS | 3 | 12 | 9 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 3 | 0 | .222 | .417 | .556 | .972 | ||
| ALCS | 6 | 26 | 21 | 1 | 5 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 5 | 4 | 0 | .238 | .385 | .286 | .670 | ||
| World Series | 6 | 14 | 13 | 3 | 8 | 1 | 0 | 3 | 8 | 1 | 3 | 0 | .615 | .643 | 1.385 | 2.027 | ||
| 2007 Post | NYY | ALDS | 4 | 16 | 11 | 4 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 5 | 2 | 0 | .182 | .438 | .182 | .619 |
| 2006 Post | NYY | ALDS | 4 | 16 | 16 | 1 | 4 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 0 | .250 | .250 | .313 | .563 |
| 2005 Post | NYY | ALDS | 5 | 22 | 20 | 4 | 4 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 0 | .200 | .273 | .400 | .673 |
| 2005–2012 | Postseason total · 4 Octobers | 28 | 106 | 90 | 14 | 25 | 4 | 0 | 5 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 0 | .278 | .387 | .489 | .876 |
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 | 39 | 36 | 8 | 1 | 3 | 7 | .222 | .282 | .306 | .267 | 17.9% |
| vs RHP | 64 | 59 | 6 | 1 | 5 | 15 | .102 | .172 | .169 | .155 | 23.4% |
Spray chart
Where every ball he put in play landed, 2012.
Loading 73 batted balls…
Hot and cold zones
Batting average by pitch location, 2012.
Situational hitting
How Hideki Matsui 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 | 103 | — | — | — | — | — | — | .147 | .214 | .221 | .198 |
| Bases empty | 53 | 49 | 5 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 12 | .102 | .170 | .122 | .144 |
| Runner on first · thin | 18 | 17 | 4 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 5 | .235 | .278 | .412 | .304 |
| Runners on | 50 | 46 | 9 | 2 | 7 | 4 | 10 | .196 | .260 | .326 | .256 |
| RISP | 32 | 29 | 5 | 1 | 5 | 3 | 5 | .172 | .250 | .276 | .228 |
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, 2012.
Not in the 2012 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 Hideki Matsui with…
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Similar players
Nearest 2012 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.