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Denard Span headshot

Players · S · LF · 2018 regular season

Denard Span

Age
34
B/T
L/L
Height
6' 0"
Weight
210 lb
Number
#2
Born
February 27, 1984 in Washington, DC, United States
MLB debut
April 6, 2008

Compare with…

dbWAR
26.4
Regular season, 11 season(s)
PA
501
AVG
.261
OBP
.341
SLG
.419
wRC+
117
100 = avg

Denard Span was a left fielder for the Seattle Mariners. In 2018 he hit 11 home runs and knocked in 58 RBIs, notching 114 hits across 501 plate appearances in 135 games. His batting average was .261, 5.2% higher than the league average of .248. He reached base at a .341 clip and slugged .419, for an OPS of .760, 4.5% higher than the league mark of .728 — 4th of 14 on his team, and 154th of 448 among MLB batters with 100+ plate appearances. He averaged 87.8 mph off the bat, hit 34.1% of balls in play at 95 mph or better, barrelled 3.0% of them and made contact on 84.6% of his swings. Adjusted for his ballpark and league, his 117 wRC+ puts his offence 17% above average. That comes to 1.7 dbWAR — +6.9 runs with the bat, +1.3 for the ballpark, -0.1 on the bases, -0.2 on double plays, -5.2 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, 2018 regular season.

wRC+117
wOBA.335
ISO.158
BB%10.2%
WAR1.7

How the WAR is built

Runs above replacement, 2018. These terms sum to +16.4 runs, divided by runs-per-win to give WAR. There is no fielding term.

Batting+6.9Ballpark+1.3Baserunning-0.1Double plays-0.2Position-5.2Replacement+13.8
BattingBallparkBaserunningDouble playsPositionReplacement

WAR by season

4.62.30.00809101112131415161718

Batting Regular season

Standard and advanced, by season. Regular-season games only — postseason games are listed separately below.

Trend
2018SEA/TB135501114115895179.261.341.419.158.29110.2%15.8%.335+6.91171.7
2017SF1285421351243124069.272.329.427.155.2957.4%12.7%.329+2.11082.0
2016SF1426371521153125379.266.331.381.115.2918.3%12.4%.314-3.8952.0
2015WSH6127574522112526.301.365.431.130.3189.1%9.5%.352+7.71252.1
2014WSH147668184537315065.302.355.416.115.3307.5%9.7%.346+16.11204.6
2013WSH152662170447204277.279.327.380.102.3136.3%11.6%.317-0.3992.5
2012MIN127568146441174762.283.342.395.112.3158.3%10.9%.329+4.31052.4
2011MIN703117521662736.264.328.359.095.2978.7%11.6%.313-1.9961.1
2010MIN151705166358266074.264.331.348.084.2948.5%10.5%.311-8.1912.1
2009MIN145676180868237089.311.392.415.104.35310.4%13.2%.363+16.51173.5
2008MIN92411102647185060.294.387.432.138.33912.2%14.6%.368+11.91282.4

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

Postseason Denard Span's postseason batting, by October and round. Not part of any regular-season figure on this page.
SeasonTeamRoundGPAABRH2B3BHRRBIBBSOSBAVGOBPSLGOPS
2016 PostSFPostseason total42019352101141.263.300.474.774
Wild Card154010000111.250.400.250.650
NLDS31515342101030.267.267.533.800
2014 PostWSHNLDS42019020000130.105.150.105.255
2010 PostMINALDS31313040000000.308.308.308.615
2009 PostMINALDS31515161001021.400.400.467.867
CareerPostseason total · 4 Octobers1468664173102292.258.279.333.613

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.

Batting by the hand the pitcher throws with, 2018. Counted from play-by-play, so totals can differ from the box-score season line by a plate appearance or two.
SplitPAABHHRBBSOAVGOBPSLGwOBAK%
vs LHP103862621218.302.388.442.36417.5%
vs RHP3983518893961.251.329.413.32815.3%

Spray chart

Where every ball he put in play landed, 2018.

Loading 335 batted balls…

Contact quality

How hard and at what angle he hits it, over 302 tracked batted balls in 2018. Percentiles are against qualified batters.

Barrel rate
3.0%
9 barrels
Exit velocity
87.8
mph average
Max exit velo
108.1
mph, hardest hit
Hard hit
34.1%
95 mph or better
Sweet spot
43.4%
8–32° launch
Launch angle
12.3°
average
Barrel rate3.0%
Exit velocity87.8 mph
Hard hit rate34.1%
Contact rate84.6%

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, 2018.

.235.000.151.161.30826 AB.23126 AB—6 AB.31554 AB.38552 AB.27037 AB.29341 AB.31058 AB.17229 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 .247.

Situational hitting

How Denard Span 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 situations501——————.261.341.419.335
Bases empty28825656662843.219.306.355.298
Runner on first84792512513.316.357.392.332
Runners on213181585522336.320.390.508.386
RISP129102334501823.324.411.598.421

Runners on includes runners in scoring position, which is the convention every reference uses. Counted from play-by-play, 2018.

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Denard Span

Similar players

Nearest 2018 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.