DataBaseball
2026
Lucas Duda headshot

1B · 2019

Lucas Duda

Age
33
B/T
L/R
Height
6' 4"
Weight
255 lb
Number
#21
Born
February 3, 1986 in Riverside, CA, USA
MLB debut
September 1, 2010
dbWAR
3.9
5 season(s)
PA
119
AVG
.171
OBP
.252
SLG
.324
wRC+
48
100 = avg

Lucas Duda is a first baseman for the Kansas City Royals. In 2019 he hit 4 home runs and knocked in 15 RBIs, notching 18 hits across 119 plate appearances in 38 games. His batting average was .171, 32.0% lower than the league average of .252. He reached base at a .252 clip and slugged .324, for an OPS of .576, 24.0% lower than the league mark of .758 — 11th of 16 on his team, and 420th of 451 among MLB batters with 100+ plate appearances. He averaged 92.9 mph off the bat, hit 50.8% of balls in play at 95 mph or better, barrelled 10.8% of them and made contact on 73.1% of his swings. Adjusted for his ballpark and league, his 48 wRC+ puts his offence 52% below average. That comes to -0.6 dbWAR — -7.6 runs with the bat, -0.0 on the bases, -3.0 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, 2019.

wRC+48
wOBA.248
ISO.152
BB%9.2%
WAR-.6

How the WAR is built

Runs above replacement, 2019. These four terms sum to -6.7 runs, divided by runs-per-win to give WAR.

Batting-7.6Baserunning-0.0Position-3.0Replacement+4.0
BattingBaserunningPositionReplacement

WAR by season

2.81.1-0.61516171819

Batting

Standard and advanced, by season.

Trend
2019381191841501132.171.252.324.152.1979.2%26.9%.248-7.648-0.6
2018105367791450128102.241.313.418.177.3027.6%27.8%.318+0.1980.4
2017127491923064060135.217.322.496.279.23812.2%27.5%.346+8.81201.3
2016461723572301536.229.302.412.183.2508.7%20.9%.308-1.9910.0
20151355541152773066138.244.352.486.242.28511.9%24.9%.364+20.71382.8

Platoon splits

How he hits left- and right-handed pitching.

Batting by the hand the pitcher throws with, 2019. Counted from play-by-play, so totals can differ from the box-score season line by a plate appearance or two.
SplitPAABHHRBBSOAVGOBPSLGwOBAK%
vs LHP23212024.095.174.143.15317.4%
vs RHP9684164928.190.271.369.27129.2%

Spray chart

Where every ball he put in play landed, 2019.

Loading 74 batted balls…

Contact quality

How hard and at what angle he hits it, over 65 tracked batted balls in 2019. Percentiles are against qualified batters.

Barrel rate
10.8%
7 barrels
Exit velocity
92.9
mph average
Max exit velo
111.4
mph, hardest hit
Hard hit
50.8%
95 mph or better
Sweet spot
38.5%
8–32° launch
Launch angle
17.4°
average
Barrel rate10.8%
Exit velocity92.9 mph
Hard hit rate50.8%
Contact rate73.1%

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, 2019.

.071.0003 AB3 AB.33312 AB.12025 AB.50010 AB7 AB.2229 AB5 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 .252.

Situational hitting

How Lucas Duda 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 situations119.171.252.324.248
Bases empty6762633521.097.164.258.185
Runner on first292680326.308.379.423.350
Runners on524312112611.279.365.419.331
RISP · thin231741945.235.348.412.305

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, 2019.

Head to head

Put Lucas Duda beside up to three others.

Compare — add up to 3 more players
Lucas Duda

Similar players

Nearest 2019 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.