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Cliff Pennington headshot

Players · P · 3B · 2018 regular season

Cliff Pennington

Age
34
B/T
S/R
Height
5' 10"
Weight
200 lb
Number
#2
Born
June 15, 1984 in Corpus Christi, TX, United States
MLB debut
August 12, 2008

Compare with…

dbWAR
6.0
Regular season, 12 season(s)
PA
34
AVG
.138
OBP
.265
SLG
.138
wRC+
22
100 = avg

Cliff Pennington was a third baseman for the Cincinnati Reds. In 2018 he hit 0 home runs and knocked in 0 RBIs, notching 4 hits across 34 plate appearances in 16 games. His batting average was .138, 44.4% lower than the league average of .248. He reached base at a .265 clip and slugged .138, for an OPS of .403, 44.7% lower than the league mark of .728. He averaged 84.2 mph off the bat, hit 18.8% of balls in play at 95 mph or better and made contact on 67.7% of his swings. Adjusted for his ballpark and league, his 22 wRC+ puts his offence 78% below average. That comes to -0.2 dbWAR — -3.1 runs with the bat, -0.1 for the ballpark, -0.0 on the bases, +0.3 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+22
wOBA.207
ISO.000
BB%14.7%
WAR-.2

How the WAR is built

Runs above replacement, 2018. These terms sum to -2.0 runs, divided by runs-per-win to give WAR. There is no fielding term.

Batting-3.1Ballpark-0.1Baserunning-0.0Double plays-0.0Position+0.3Replacement+0.9
BattingBallparkBaserunningDouble playsPositionReplacement

WAR by season

2.31.0-0.40809101112131415161718

Batting Regular season

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

Trend
2018CIN16344000513.138.265.138.000.25014.7%38.2%.207-3.122-0.2
2017LAA792174932131658.253.306.330.077.3337.4%26.7%.281-7.971-0.0
2016LAA661883631011355.209.265.308.099.2896.9%29.3%.255-9.957-0.4
2015AZ/TOR962494432132749.210.298.281.071.25310.8%19.7%.264-10.562-0.3
2014AZ672014521062036.254.340.350.096.30910.0%17.9%.318+0.7991.0
2013AZ922996511822654.242.310.309.067.2988.7%18.1%.277-9.4720.3
2012OAK12546290628153590.215.278.311.096.2597.6%19.5%.266-19.1660.2
2011OAK1475701368581442104.264.319.369.105.3147.4%18.2%.309-5.1932.1
2010OAK154576127646295096.250.319.368.118.2968.7%16.7%.312-6.1922.3
2009OAK602295842171946.279.342.418.139.3428.3%20.1%.340+1.31060.9
2008OAK35117240941318.242.339.293.051.29311.1%15.4%.300-3.2790.2

Pitching Regular season

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

Trend
2018CIN101.000011129.007.163.009.018.0217173-0.0—

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 Cliff Pennington's postseason batting, by October and round. Not part of any regular-season figure on this page.
SeasonTeamRoundGPAABRH2B3BHRRBIBBSOSBAVGOBPSLGOPS
2015 PostTORPostseason total221000000100.000.500.000.500
ALDS111000000000.000.000.000.000
ALCS110000000100—1.000——
2012 PostOAKALDS51714140001340.286.412.286.697
CareerPostseason total · 2 Octobers71915140001440.267.421.267.688

Postseason pitching

Postseason Cliff Pennington's postseason pitching, by October and round. Not part of any regular-season figure on this page.
SeasonTeamRoundGGSIPWLSVHERHRBBSOERAWHIPK/9
2015 PostTORALCS100.1000200000.006.000.0

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 LHP431011.333.500.333.39625.0%
vs RHP302630412.115.233.115.18240.0%
Opponent batting by the side the hitter bats from, 2018. Counted from play-by-play, so totals can differ from the box-score season line by a plate appearance or two.
SplitPAABHHRBBSOAVGOBPSLGwOBAK%
vs RHB641021.250.500.500.44816.7%

Spray chart

Where every ball he put in play landed, 2018.

Loading 16 batted balls…

Contact quality

How hard and at what angle he hits it, over 16 tracked batted balls in 2018. Percentiles are against qualified batters.

Barrel rate
0.0%
0 barrels
Exit velocity
84.2
mph average
Max exit velo
99.3
mph, hardest hit
Hard hit
18.8%
95 mph or better
Sweet spot
31.3%
8–32° launch
Launch angle
9.4°
average
Barrel rate0.0%
Exit velocity84.2 mph
Hard hit rate18.8%
Contact rate67.7%

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.

—————1 AB——0 AB—5 AB—4 AB—3 AB——3 AB—1 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 Cliff Pennington 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 situations34——————.138.265.138.207
Bases empty · thin141320015.154.214.154.176
Runner on first · thin11820033.250.455.250.352
Runners on · thin201620048.125.300.125.229
RISP · thin9800015.000.111.000.078

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, 2018.

Pitch sequencing

What Cliff Pennington throws in each count, and what he follows each pitch with. Select any cell for the breakdown.

ShowBatter
Four-seamSinker

Select a count to see exactly what Cliff Pennington throws in it.

Pitch arsenal

What he throws, how hard, how often it misses, and what hitters do with it.

Four-Seam Fastball62.1%1887.32,07544.4%0.0%3——
Cliff Pennington's arsenal by usage. Velocity is average release speed in mph, spin in rpm, and whiff rate is misses per swing — the cleanest single measure of whether a pitch beats hitters. BAA and OPS are what hitters did against each pitch, credited to the one that ended the plate appearance, and are left blank under 15 at-bats.

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Cliff Pennington
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.