DataBaseball
2026
Matt Vierling headshot

Players · V · CF · 2026 regular season

Matt Vierling

Age
30
B/T
R/R
Height
6' 1"
Weight
205 lb
Number
#8
Born
September 16, 1996 in St. Louis, MO, United States
MLB debut
June 19, 2021
Drafted
2018, round 5
College
Notre Dame
High school
Christian Brothers
Salary, 2026
$3.23M

Compare with…vs Christian Vázquezvs Josh Rojasvs Jake Meyers

dbWAR
3.8
Regular season, 6 season(s)
PA
291
AVG
.207
OBP
.255
SLG
.335
wRC+
61
100 = avg

Matt Vierling is a center fielder for the Detroit Tigers. In 2026 he hit 5 home runs and knocked in 31 RBIs, notching 55 hits across 291 plate appearances in 84 games. His batting average was .207, 15.3% lower than the league average of .244. He reached base at a .255 clip and slugged .335, for an OPS of .590, 18.0% lower than the league mark of .719 — 15th of 18 on his team, and 408th of 465 among MLB batters with 100+ plate appearances. He averaged 87.7 mph off the bat, hit 37.4% of balls in play at 95 mph or better, barrelled 4.5% of them and made contact on 81.8% of his swings. Adjusted for his ballpark and league, his 61 wRC+ puts his offence 39% below average. That comes to -0.5 dbWAR — -14.0 runs with the bat, +0.4 for the ballpark, -0.3 on the bases, -0.4 on double plays, +0.8 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+61
wOBA.260
ISO.128
BB%6.5%
WAR-.5

How the WAR is built

Runs above replacement, 2026. These terms sum to -4.5 runs, divided by runs-per-win to give WAR. There is no fielding term.

Batting-14.0Ballpark+0.4Baserunning-0.3Double plays-0.4Position+0.8Replacement+9.0
BattingBallparkBaserunningDouble playsPositionReplacement

WAR by season

2.41.0-0.5212223242526

Batting Regular season

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

Trend
2026DET842915553141949.207.255.335.128.2306.5%16.8%.260-14.061-0.5
2025DET31100211112724.239.310.307.068.3087.0%24.0%.281-2.8740.0
2024DET1445671331657641121.257.312.423.166.3037.2%21.3%.319+3.31052.4
2023DET1325301251044644112.261.329.388.127.3218.3%21.1%.317-1.5951.2
2022PHI1053578063272370.246.297.351.105.2906.4%19.6%.286-7.2810.2
2021PHI337723262420.324.364.479.155.4205.2%26.0%.357+2.61290.5

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 Matt Vierling's postseason batting, by October and round. Not part of any regular-season figure on this page.
SeasonTeamRoundGPAABRH2B3BHRRBIBBSOSBAVGOBPSLGOPS
2024 PostDETPostseason total733281410024140.143.242.179.421
Wild Card2108120001240.250.400.250.650
ALDS523200210012100.100.174.150.324
2022 PostPHIPostseason total71513221001140.154.214.231.445
Wild Card122010000000.500.500.5001.000
NLDS354100000010.000.000.000.000
NLCS144111001030.250.250.500.750
World Series243000000100.000.250.000.250
CareerPostseason total · 2 Octobers1448413620035180.146.234.195.429

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, 2026. Counted from play-by-play, so totals can differ from the box-score season line by a plate appearance or two.
SplitPAABHHRBBSOAVGOBPSLGwOBAK%
vs LHP1191052721215.257.328.438.33512.6%
vs RHP172161283734.174.205.267.20919.8%

Spray chart

Where every ball he put in play landed, 2026.

Loading 222 batted balls…

Contact quality

How hard and at what angle he hits it, over 222 tracked batted balls in 2026. Percentiles are against qualified batters.

Barrel rate
4.5%
10 barrels
Exit velocity
87.7
mph average
Max exit velo
111.3
mph, hardest hit
Hard hit
37.4%
95 mph or better
Sweet spot
36.9%
8–32° launch
Launch angle
17.6°
average
Barrel rate4.5%
Exit velocity87.7 mph
Hard hit rate37.4%
Contact rate81.8%

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.

.231.211.105.107.09111 AB.13622 AB.40010 AB.20020 AB.30030 AB.16025 AB.23517 AB.27333 AB.25020 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 Matt Vierling 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 situations291——————.207.255.335.260
Bases empty15214230331023.211.263.345.271
Runner on first67611324512.213.273.328.271
Runners on13912425228926.202.246.323.249
RISP726312024414.190.222.317.229

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

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Matt Vierling

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.