DataBaseball
2026
Desmond Jennings headshot

LF · 2016

Desmond Jennings

Age
30
B/T
R/R
Height
6' 2"
Weight
210 lb
Number
#8
Born
October 30, 1986 in Birmingham, AL, USA
MLB debut
September 1, 2010
dbWAR
.0
2 season(s)
PA
225
AVG
.200
OBP
.281
SLG
.350
wRC+
75
100 = avg

Desmond Jennings is a left fielder for the Tampa Bay Rays. In 2016 he hit 7 home runs and knocked in 20 RBIs, notching 40 hits across 225 plate appearances in 60 games. His batting average was .200, 21.7% lower than the league average of .255. He reached base at a .281 clip and slugged .350, for an OPS of .631, 14.6% lower than the league mark of .739 — 12th of 16 on his team, and 356th of 438 among MLB batters with 100+ plate appearances. He averaged 86.4 mph off the bat, hit 37.3% of balls in play at 95 mph or better, barrelled 5.1% of them and made contact on 69.0% of his swings. Adjusted for his ballpark and league, his 75 wRC+ puts his offence 25% below average. That comes to -0.1 dbWAR — -7.2 runs with the bat, +0.3 on the bases, -1.2 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, 2016.

wRC+75
wOBA.281
ISO.150
BB%9.3%
WAR-.1

How the WAR is built

Runs above replacement, 2016. These four terms sum to -0.7 runs, divided by runs-per-win to give WAR.

Batting-7.2Baserunning+0.3Position-1.2Replacement+7.5
BattingBaserunningPositionReplacement

WAR by season

0.10.0-0.11516

Batting

Standard and advanced, by season.

Trend
2016602254072022158.200.281.350.150.2439.3%25.8%.281-7.275-0.1
20152810826175817.268.324.340.072.3097.4%15.7%.297-1.7870.1

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 LHP7267131516.194.250.299.24522.2%
vs RHP1531332761642.203.296.376.29927.5%

Spray chart

Where every ball he put in play landed, 2016.

Loading 136 batted balls…

Contact quality

How hard and at what angle he hits it, over 118 tracked batted balls in 2016. Percentiles are against qualified batters.

Barrel rate
5.1%
6 barrels
Exit velocity
86.4
mph average
Max exit velo
108.4
mph, hardest hit
Hard hit
37.3%
95 mph or better
Sweet spot
33.1%
8–32° launch
Launch angle
10.1°
average
Barrel rate5.1%
Exit velocity86.4 mph
Hard hit rate37.3%
Contact rate69.0%

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.

.300.0775 AB.20010 AB7 AB.33321 AB.14321 AB.21723 AB.18211 AB.41724 AB.10329 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 Desmond Jennings 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 situations225.200.281.350.281
Bases empty13512128771332.231.311.438.328
Runner on first4340500315.125.186.125.151
Runners on907912013826.152.236.215.211
RISP47397013511.179.283.308.267

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

Head to head

Put Desmond Jennings beside up to three others.

Compare — add up to 3 more players
Desmond Jennings

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.