Players · W · C · 2026 regular season

Austin Wells

Age: 27
B/T: L/R
Height: 6' 1"
Weight: 220 lb
Number: #28

Born: July 12, 1999 in Scottsdale, AZ, United States
MLB debut: September 1, 2023
Drafted: 2018, round 35
College: Arizona
High school: Bishop Gorman

Compare with…vs Rhys Hoskins vs Cal Raleigh vs David Fry

dbWAR: 4.6
PA: 388
AVG: .186
OBP: .292
SLG: .332
wRC+: 73

Austin Wells is a catcher for the New York Yankees. In 2026 he hit 14 home runs and knocked in 32 RBIs, notching 62 hits across 388 plate appearances in 121 games. His batting average was .186, 23.9% lower than the league average of .244. He reached base at a .292 clip and slugged .332, for an OPS of .624, 13.2% lower than the league mark of .719 — the worst on his team, and 370th of 465 among MLB batters with 100+ plate appearances. He averaged 88.6 mph off the bat, hit 42.9% of balls in play at 95 mph or better, barrelled 6.4% of them and made contact on 72.2% of his swings. Adjusted for his ballpark and league, his 73 wRC+ puts his offence 27% below average. That comes to 0.5 dbWAR — -11.1 runs with the bat, -0.8 for the ballpark, +0.3 on the bases, -2.4 on double plays, +7.1 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+73

wOBA.284

ISO.147

BB%12.4%

WAR.5

How the WAR is built

Runs above replacement, 2026. These terms sum to +5.1 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.


2026	NYY	121	388	62	14	32	4	48	103	.186	.292	.332	.147	.219	12.4%	26.5%	.284	-11.1	73	0.5
2025	NYY	119	448	88	21	71	5	30	118	.219	.275	.436	.217	.245	6.7%	26.3%	.303	-4.4	94	1.7
2024	NYY	111	414	81	13	55	1	47	87	.229	.322	.395	.167	.261	11.4%	21.0%	.317	+1.8	103	2.1
2023	NYY	19	75	16	4	13	0	3	14	.229	.257	.486	.257	.226	4.0%	18.7%	.310	-0.6	93	0.3

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 Austin Wells'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
2026 Post	NYY	Postseason total · through Oct 7	5	17	15	2	5	2	0	4	0	4	0	.333	.294	.467	.761
		Wild Card	2	8	6	2	3	0	0	4	0	0	0	.500	.375	.500	.875
		ALDS	3	9	9	0	2	2	0	0	0	4	0	.222	.222	.444	.667
2025 Post	NYY	Postseason total	7	23	22	1	5	0	0	3	1	6	0	.227	.261	.227	.488
		Wild Card	3	10	9	0	2	0	0	2	1	3	0	.222	.300	.222	.522
		ALDS	4	13	13	1	3	0	0	1	0	3	0	.231	.231	.231	.462
2024 Post	NYY	Postseason total	14	55	50	3	6	1	2	4	4	22	1	.120	.200	.260	.460
		ALDS	4	18	16	0	2	0	0	2	2	6	0	.125	.222	.125	.347
		ALCS	5	18	17	1	1	0	1	1	1	9	0	.059	.111	.235	.346
		World Series	5	19	17	2	3	1	1	1	1	7	1	.176	.263	.412	.675
Career		Postseason total · 3 Octobers	26	95	87	6	16	3	2	11	5	32	1	.184	.232	.287	.519

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, 2026. 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	99	90	11	3	8	29	.122	.192	.244	.199	29.3%
vs RHP	289	244	51	11	40	74	.209	.326	.365	.313	25.6%

Spray chart

Where every ball he put in play landed, 2026.

Loading 232 batted balls…

Contact quality

How hard and at what angle he hits it, over 233 tracked batted balls in 2026. Percentiles are against qualified batters.

Barrel rate: 6.4%
Exit velocity: 88.6
Max exit velo: 110.5
Hard hit: 42.9%
Sweet spot: 35.0%
Launch angle: 20.2°

Barrel rate6.4%

Exit velocity88.6 mph

Hard hit rate42.9%

Contact rate72.2%

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.

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 Austin Wells 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	388	—	—	—	—	—	—	.186	.292	.332	.284
Bases empty	234	208	37	11	11	24	63	.178	.269	.351	.280
Runner on first	63	51	13	3	8	10	17	.255	.387	.451	.377
Runners on	154	126	25	3	21	24	40	.198	.327	.302	.290
RISP	91	75	12	0	13	14	23	.160	.286	.200	.230

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

Compare Austin Wells with…

Side by side with up to three others.

Compare with… add up to 3 more players

Austin Wells

Or read one already written — Austin Wells against:

Similar players

Nearest 2026 seasons by discipline, contact, power and speed, on rate statistics rather than totals.

David FryCLE

wRC+: 91
HR: 8
AVG: .201
WAR: 0.2

LaMonte Wade Jr.HOU

wRC+: 89
HR: 4
AVG: .205
WAR: 0.0

Josh SmithTEX

wRC+: 74
HR: 6
AVG: .203
WAR: 0.1

Jake RogersDET

wRC+: 63
HR: 4
AVG: .161
WAR: -0.1

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.