DataBaseball
2026
Ruben Gotay headshot

Players · G · PH · 2008 regular season

Ruben Gotay

Age
26
B/T
S/R
Height
5' 11"
Weight
175 lb
Number
#8
Born
December 25, 1982 in Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico
MLB debut
August 3, 2004

Compare with…

dbWAR
.3
Regular season, 2005–2008 only
PA
117
AVG
.235
OBP
.322
SLG
.343
wRC+
81
100 = avg

Ruben Gotay was a position player for the Atlanta Braves. In 2008 he hit 2 home runs and knocked in 8 RBIs, notching 24 hits across 117 plate appearances in 86 games. His batting average was .235, 10.8% lower than the league average of .264. He reached base at a .322 clip and slugged .343, for an OPS of .665, 11.3% lower than the league mark of .749 — 13th of 15 on his team, and 339th of 447 among MLB batters with 100+ plate appearances. He made contact on 76.2% of his swings. Adjusted for his ballpark and league, his 81 wRC+ puts his offence 19% below average. That comes to -0.2 dbWAR — -2.5 runs with the bat, -0.1 for the ballpark, -0.3 on the bases, -0.9 on double plays, -1.4 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, 2008 regular season.

wRC+81
wOBA.307
ISO.108
BB%11.1%
WAR-.2

How the WAR is built

Runs above replacement, 2008. These terms sum to -2.0 runs, divided by runs-per-win to give WAR. There is no fielding term.

Batting-2.5Ballpark-0.1Baserunning-0.3Double plays-0.9Position-1.4Replacement+3.3
BattingBallparkBaserunningDouble playsPositionReplacement

WAR by season

0.70.2-0.2050708

Batting Regular season

Standard and advanced, by season. Regular-season games only. Seasons on file run 2005–2008; his career began in 2004, and earlier seasons are not in this data yet.

Trend
2008ATL86117242811332.235.322.343.108.32411.1%27.4%.307-2.581-0.2
2007NYM952115642431642.295.351.421.126.3597.6%19.9%.344+1.51080.7
2005KC863176452922251.227.288.344.117.2556.9%16.1%.283-12.368-0.2

Platoon splits

How he hits left- and right-handed pitching.

Batting by the hand the pitcher throws with, 2008. Counted from play-by-play, so totals can differ from the box-score season line by a plate appearance or two.
SplitPAABHHRBBSOAVGOBPSLGwOBAK%
vs LHP312640511.154.290.154.23435.5%
vs RHP8676202821.263.333.408.33424.4%

Spray chart

Where every ball he put in play landed, 2008.

Loading 66 batted balls…

Hot and cold zones

Batting average by pitch location, 2008.

——.333.222—6 AB.10010 AB—6 AB.40010 AB.30010 AB—2 AB—6 AB.08312 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 .263.

Situational hitting

How Ruben Gotay 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 situations117——————.235.322.343.307
Bases empty64571622717.281.359.439.359
Runner on first3125401410.160.276.200.238
Runners on5345806615.178.275.222.242
RISP · thin222040525.200.273.250.247

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, 2008.

Not in the 2008 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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Ruben Gotay

Similar players

Nearest 2008 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.