DataBaseball
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Prince Fielder headshot

DH · 2016

Prince Fielder

Age
32
B/T
L/R
Height
5' 11"
Weight
275 lb
Number
#28
Born
May 9, 1984 in Ontario, CA, USA
MLB debut
June 13, 2005
dbWAR
2.0
2 season(s)
PA
370
AVG
.212
OBP
.292
SLG
.334
wRC+
68
100 = avg

Prince Fielder is a designated hitter for the Texas Rangers. In 2016 he hit 8 home runs and knocked in 44 RBIs, notching 69 hits across 370 plate appearances in 89 games. His batting average was .212, 17.1% lower than the league average of .255. He reached base at a .292 clip and slugged .334, for an OPS of .626, 15.3% lower than the league mark of .739 — 12th of 14 on his team, and 363rd of 438 among MLB batters with 100+ plate appearances. He averaged 89.4 mph off the bat, hit 35.6% of balls in play at 95 mph or better, barrelled 5.9% of them and made contact on 75.1% of his swings. Adjusted for his ballpark and league, his 68 wRC+ puts his offence 32% below average. That comes to -1.1 dbWAR — -12.5 runs with the bat, -0.2 on the bases, -10.5 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, 2016.

wRC+68
wOBA.279
ISO.123
BB%8.6%
WAR-1.1

How the WAR is built

Runs above replacement, 2016. These four terms sum to -10.9 runs, divided by runs-per-win to give WAR.

Batting-12.5Baserunning-0.2Position-10.5Replacement+12.3
BattingBaserunningPositionReplacement

WAR by season

3.11.0-1.11516

Batting

Standard and advanced, by season.

Trend
2016893706984403263.212.292.334.123.2358.6%17.0%.279-12.568-1.1
2015158693187239806488.305.378.463.158.3239.2%12.7%.364+25.91283.1

Platoon splits

How he hits left- and right-handed pitching.

Batting by the hand the pitcher throws with, 2016. Counted from play-by-play, so totals can differ from the box-score season line by a plate appearance or two.
SplitPAABHHRBBSOAVGOBPSLGwOBAK%
vs LHP10594172824.181.248.277.23622.9%
vs RHP2652325262439.224.309.358.29614.7%

Spray chart

Where every ball he put in play landed, 2016.

Loading 267 batted balls…

Contact quality

How hard and at what angle he hits it, over 239 tracked batted balls in 2016. Percentiles are against qualified batters.

Barrel rate
5.9%
14 barrels
Exit velocity
89.4
mph average
Max exit velo
113.0
mph, hardest hit
Hard hit
35.6%
95 mph or better
Sweet spot
37.7%
8–32° launch
Launch angle
10.6°
average
Barrel rate5.9%
Exit velocity89.4 mph
Hard hit rate35.6%
Contact rate75.1%

A barrel is a batted ball whose exit velocity and launch angle have historically produced at least a .500 average and 1.500 slugging — 98 mph within 26–30°, widening to 8–50° by 116 mph. Reconstructed from Statcast's published anchor points, which reproduces them exactly; the interior is within a degree. Sweet spot (8–32°) is an exact definition.

Hot and cold zones

Batting average by pitch location, 2016.

.152.184.043.15413 AB.17617 AB.11817 AB.21138 AB.37046 AB.25016 AB.31435 AB.23821 AB.18211 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 .255.

Situational hitting

How Prince Fielder 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 situations370.212.292.334.279
Bases empty19117434441431.195.267.328.266
Runner on first87821939519.232.276.354.277
Runners on179152354401832.230.318.342.293
RISP9270161311313.229.359.329.308

Runners on includes runners in scoring position, which is the convention every reference uses. Counted from play-by-play, 2016.

Head to head

Put Prince Fielder beside up to three others.

Compare — add up to 3 more players
Prince Fielder

Similar players

Nearest 2016 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.