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Matt LaPorta headshot

Players · L · DH · 2012 regular season

Matt LaPorta

Age
27
B/T
R/R
Height
6' 2"
Weight
215 lb
Number
#7
Born
January 8, 1985 in Port Charlotte, FL, United States
MLB debut
May 3, 2009

Compare with…

dbWAR
-.0
Regular season, 4 season(s)
PA
60
AVG
.241
OBP
.267
SLG
.328
wRC+
64
100 = avg

Matt LaPorta was a designated hitter for the Cleveland Indians. In 2012 he hit 1 home run and knocked in 5 RBIs, notching 14 hits across 60 plate appearances in 20 games. His batting average was .241, 5.2% lower than the league average of .255. He reached base at a .267 clip and slugged .328, for an OPS of .594, 18.0% lower than the league mark of .724. He made contact on 64.3% of his swings. Adjusted for his ballpark and league, his 64 wRC+ puts his offence 36% below average. That comes to -0.2 dbWAR — -2.6 runs with the bat, +0.1 for the ballpark, -0.1 on the bases, -0.3 on double plays, -1.1 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.

wRC+64
wOBA.264
ISO.086
BB%1.7%
WAR-.2

How the WAR is built

Runs above replacement, 2012. These terms sum to -2.3 runs, divided by runs-per-win to give WAR. There is no fielding term.

Batting-2.6Ballpark+0.1Baserunning-0.1Double plays-0.3Position-1.1Replacement+1.6
BattingBallparkBaserunningDouble playsPositionReplacement

WAR by season

0.3-0.0-0.409101112

Batting Regular season

Standard and advanced, by season. Regular-season games only.

Trend
2012CLE206014150117.241.267.328.086.3251.7%28.3%.264-2.664-0.2
2011CLE10338587115312387.247.299.412.165.2936.0%22.6%.314-1.9970.3
2010CLE11042583124104682.221.306.362.141.25010.8%19.3%.304-7.287-0.4
2009CLE521984672121237.254.308.442.188.2816.1%18.7%.330-0.41030.3

Platoon splits

How he hits left- and right-handed pitching.

Batting by the hand the pitcher throws with, 2012. Counted from play-by-play, so totals can differ from the box-score season line by a plate appearance or two.
SplitPAABHHRBBSOAVGOBPSLGwOBAK%
vs LHP363510109.286.306.400.31125.0%
vs RHP24234018.174.208.217.19333.3%

Spray chart

Where every ball he put in play landed, 2012.

Loading 41 batted balls…

Hot and cold zones

Batting average by pitch location, 2012.

—————3 AB—6 AB—5 AB—4 AB.2229 AB—5 AB—2 AB—4 AB—3 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 .254.

Situational hitting

How Matt LaPorta 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 situations60——————.241.267.328.264
Bases empty282690016.346.393.346.335
Runner on first · thin171731303.176.176.412.252
Runners on3232515011.156.156.313.202
RISP · thin151520208.133.133.200.145

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.

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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.