Players · G · LF · 2020 regular season

Alex Gordon

Kansas City Royals American League CentralLF

Age: 36
B/T: L/R
Height: 6' 1"
Weight: 220 lb
Number: #4

Born: February 10, 1984 in Lincoln, NE, United States
MLB debut: April 2, 2007

dbWAR: 21.2
PA: 184
AVG: .209
OBP: .299
SLG: .307
wRC+: 69

Alex Gordon was a left fielder for the Kansas City Royals. In 2020 he hit 4 home runs and knocked in 11 RBIs, notching 34 hits across 184 plate appearances in 50 games. His batting average was .209, 14.7% lower than the league average of .245. He reached base at a .299 clip and slugged .307, for an OPS of .606, 18.1% lower than the league mark of .740 — 8th of 10 on his team, and 279th of 310 among MLB batters with 100+ plate appearances. He averaged 81.4 mph off the bat, hit 25.4% of balls in play at 95 mph or better, barrelled 3.2% of them and made contact on 76.9% of his swings. Adjusted for his ballpark and league, his 69 wRC+ puts his offence 31% below average. That comes to -0.1 dbWAR — -7.0 runs with the bat, -0.1 for the ballpark, -0.1 on the bases, +1.5 on double plays, -1.6 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, 2020 regular season.

wRC+69

wOBA.277

ISO.098

BB%9.8%

WAR-.1

How the WAR is built

Runs above replacement, 2020. These terms sum to -1.3 runs, divided by runs-per-win to give WAR. There is no fielding term.

BattingBallparkBaserunningDouble playsPositionReplacement

WAR by season

Batting Regular season

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


2020	KC	50	184	34	4	11	0	18	37	.209	.299	.307	.098	.246	9.8%	20.1%	.277	-7.0	69	-0.1
2019	KC	150	633	148	13	76	5	51	100	.266	.345	.396	.129	.301	8.1%	15.8%	.321	-0.8	97	1.0
2018	KC	141	568	124	13	54	12	50	124	.245	.324	.370	.125	.299	8.8%	21.8%	.307	-5.0	91	0.7
2017	KC	146	541	99	9	45	7	45	126	.208	.293	.315	.107	.261	8.3%	23.3%	.273	-23.4	66	-1.1
2016	KC	128	506	98	17	40	8	52	148	.220	.312	.380	.160	.288	10.3%	29.2%	.306	-6.2	85	0.3
2015	KC	104	422	96	13	48	2	49	92	.271	.377	.432	.161	.327	11.6%	21.8%	.355	+12.9	126	2.1
2014	KC	155	643	150	19	74	12	65	126	.266	.351	.432	.165	.310	10.1%	19.6%	.350	+17.7	125	3.2
2013	KC	156	700	168	20	81	11	52	141	.265	.327	.422	.156	.310	7.4%	20.1%	.329	+6.4	106	2.1
2012	KC	160	721	189	14	72	10	73	140	.294	.368	.455	.160	.356	10.1%	19.4%	.362	+24.3	128	3.7
2011	KC	150	690	185	23	87	17	67	139	.303	.376	.502	.200	.358	9.7%	20.1%	.388	+36.1	147	5.1
2010	KC	73	281	52	8	20	1	34	62	.215	.315	.355	.140	.254	12.1%	22.1%	.308	-3.9	88	-0.2
2009	KC	48	189	38	6	22	5	21	43	.232	.324	.378	.146	.276	11.1%	22.8%	.320	-2.0	88	0.5
2008	KC	134	571	128	16	59	9	66	120	.260	.351	.432	.172	.309	11.6%	21.0%	.349	+7.3	113	2.9
2007	KC	151	601	134	15	60	14	41	137	.247	.314	.411	.164	.303	6.8%	22.8%	.321	-7.4	89	1.1

Pitching Regular season

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

																				Trend
2019	KC	2	0	2.1	0	0	0	8	5	0	2	19.29	11.36	4.29	0.0	7.7	428	252	-0.2	—

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 Alex Gordon's postseason batting, by October and round. Not part of any regular-season figure on this page.
Season	Team	Round	G	PA	AB	R	H	2B	HR	RBI	BB	SO	SB	AVG	OBP	SLG	OPS
2015 Post	KC	Postseason total	16	63	54	10	13	4	2	6	8	14	0	.241	.349	.426	.775
		ALDS	5	19	17	2	4	1	1	2	2	5	0	.235	.316	.471	.786
		ALCS	6	21	19	5	5	2	0	1	1	5	0	.263	.333	.368	.702
		World Series	5	23	18	3	4	1	1	3	5	4	0	.222	.391	.444	.836
2014 Post	KC	Postseason total	15	63	54	7	11	6	1	11	6	16	4	.204	.317	.370	.688
		Wild Card	1	6	5	0	0	0	0	0	1	2	1	.000	.167	.000	.167
		ALDS	3	13	10	2	3	2	0	4	3	2	2	.300	.462	.500	.962
		ALCS	4	16	12	1	3	1	1	5	2	7	0	.250	.438	.583	1.021
		World Series	7	28	27	4	5	3	0	2	0	5	1	.185	.214	.296	.511
Career		Postseason total · 2 Octobers	31	126	108	17	24	10	3	17	14	30	4	.222	.333	.398	.731

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.

Season

Batting by the hand the pitcher throws with, 2020. Counted from play-by-play, so totals can differ from the box-score season line by a plate appearance or two.
Split	PA	AB	H	HR	BB	SO	AVG	OBP	SLG	wOBA	K%
vs LHP	30	28	6	0	1	5	.214	.267	.214	.226	16.7%
vs RHP	154	135	28	4	17	32	.207	.305	.326	.287	20.8%

Spray chart

Where every ball he put in play landed, 2020.

Loading 126 batted balls…

Contact quality

How hard and at what angle he hits it, over 126 tracked batted balls in 2020. Percentiles are against qualified batters.

Barrel rate: 3.2%
Exit velocity: 81.4
Max exit velo: 112.3
Hard hit: 25.4%
Sweet spot: 36.5%
Launch angle: 9.9°

Barrel rate3.2%

Exit velocity81.4 mph

Hard hit rate25.4%

Contact rate76.9%

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, 2020.

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 .244.

Situational hitting

How Alex Gordon 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.
Situation	PA	AB	H	HR	RBI	BB	SO	AVG	OBP	SLG	wOBA
All situations	184	—	—	—	—	—	—	.209	.299	.307	.277
Bases empty	105	93	20	4	4	10	21	.215	.305	.355	.296
Runner on first	38	35	8	0	0	3	9	.229	.289	.257	.253
Runners on	79	70	14	0	7	8	16	.200	.291	.243	.253
RISP	41	35	6	0	7	5	7	.171	.293	.229	.253

Runners on includes runners in scoring position, which is the convention every reference uses. Counted from play-by-play, 2020.

Pitch arsenal

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


Sinker	72.6%	45	79.5	1,978	28.9%	9.1%	11	—	—

Alex Gordon'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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Alex Gordon

Similar players

Nearest 2020 seasons by discipline, contact, power and speed, on rate statistics rather than totals.

Marwin GonzalezMIN

wRC+: 66
HR: 5
AVG: .211
WAR: -0.2

Very close

Jose AltuveHOU

wRC+: 73
HR: 5
AVG: .219
WAR: 0.2

Very close

Nicky LopezKC

wRC+: 55
HR: 1
AVG: .201
WAR: -0.4

Eduardo EscobarAZ

wRC+: 56
HR: 4
AVG: .212
WAR: -0.4

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.