DataBaseball
2026
Donovan Walton headshot

Players · W · 2B · 2026 regular season

Donovan Walton

Age
32
B/T
L/R
Height
5' 9"
Weight
190 lb
Number
#29
Born
May 25, 1994 in Dallas, TX, United States
MLB debut
September 10, 2019
Drafted
2015, round 23
College
Oklahoma State
High school
Bishop Kelley

Compare with…vs Alex Bregmanvs Cody Bellingervs Will Smith

dbWAR
.7
Regular season, 9 season(s)
PA
268
AVG
.261
OBP
.358
SLG
.448
wRC+
114
100 = avg

Donovan Walton is a second baseman for the Athletics. In 2026 he hit 9 home runs and knocked in 32 RBIs, notching 60 hits across 268 plate appearances in 86 games. His batting average was .261, 6.9% higher than the league average of .244. He reached base at a .358 clip and slugged .448, for an OPS of .806, 12.2% higher than the league mark of .719 — the third best on his team, and 67th of 465 among MLB batters with 100+ plate appearances. He averaged 85.3 mph off the bat, hit 31.6% of balls in play at 95 mph or better, barrelled 4.8% of them and made contact on 73.1% of his swings. Adjusted for his ballpark and league, his 114 wRC+ puts his offence 14% above average. That comes to 1.6 dbWAR — +8.9 runs with the bat, -1.9 for the ballpark, -0.6 on the bases, -1.4 on double plays, +1.8 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, 2026 regular season.

wRC+114
wOBA.359
ISO.187
BB%10.4%
WAR1.6

How the WAR is built

Runs above replacement, 2026. These terms sum to +15.1 runs, divided by runs-per-win to give WAR. There is no fielding term.

Batting+8.9Ballpark-1.9Baserunning-0.6Double plays-1.4Position+1.8Replacement+8.3
BattingBallparkBaserunningDouble playsPositionReplacement

WAR by season

1.60.6-0.319202122242526

Batting Regular season

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

Trend
2026ATH/LAA862686093232846.261.358.448.187.29110.4%17.2%.359+8.91141.6
2025PHI29101001.125.125.125.000.1430.0%11.1%.111-1.5-41-0.1
2024SF825312027.136.240.273.136.1438.0%28.0%.239-1.550-0.1
2022SF/SEA247812180116.158.179.303.145.1861.3%20.5%.210-6.429-0.3
2021SEA216913271415.206.254.365.159.2395.8%21.7%.269-2.869-0.0
2020SEA414203015.154.214.231.077.2507.1%35.7%.203-1.419-0.1
2019SEA619302035.188.316.188.000.27315.8%26.3%.250-1.251-0.1

Pitching Regular season

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

Trend
2024SF101.000020000.003.172.000.00.00780.0
2022SF101.0000330127.0019.114.000.09.0680482-0.2

Platoon splits

How he hits left- and right-handed pitching.

Batting by the hand the pitcher throws with, 2026. Counted from play-by-play, so totals can differ from the box-score season line by a plate appearance or two.
SplitPAABHHRBBSOAVGOBPSLGwOBAK%
vs LHP20172112.118.167.294.20210.0%
vs RHP2482135882744.272.372.460.37017.7%

No pitching splits recorded for 2026.

Spray chart

Where every ball he put in play landed, 2026.

Loading 187 batted balls…

Contact quality

How hard and at what angle he hits it, over 187 tracked batted balls in 2026. Percentiles are against qualified batters.

Barrel rate
4.8%
9 barrels
Exit velocity
85.3
mph average
Max exit velo
105.6
mph, hardest hit
Hard hit
31.6%
95 mph or better
Sweet spot
42.2%
8–32° launch
Launch angle
11.5°
average
Barrel rate4.8%
Exit velocity85.3 mph
Hard hit rate31.6%
Contact rate73.1%

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, 2026.

.111—.200.136.27311 AB.47117 AB.33315 AB.30030 AB.29434 AB.33321 AB.23126 AB.23113 AB.14314 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 .243.

Situational hitting

How Donovan Walton 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 situations268——————.261.358.448.359
Bases empty15013638671126.279.347.493.366
Runner on first534181588.195.365.341.334
Runners on11894223251720.234.374.383.349
RISP655314220912.264.381.415.361

Runners on includes runners in scoring position, which is the convention every reference uses. Counted from play-by-play, 2026.

Pitch arsenal

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

Fastball100.0%1366.81,62715.4%16.7%5——
Donovan Walton'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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Donovan Walton

Similar players

Nearest 2026 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.