Players · S · 2B · 2026 regular season

Josh Smith

Age: 29
B/T: L/R
Height: 5' 9"
Weight: 172 lb
Number: #9

Born: August 7, 1997 in Baton Rouge, LA, United States
MLB debut: May 30, 2022
Drafted: 2016, round 38
College: Louisiana State
High school: Catholic
Salary, 2026: $3.23M

Compare with…vs Corey Seager vs Marcus Semien vs Wyatt Langford

dbWAR: 5.4
PA: 243
AVG: .203
OBP: .290
SLG: .321
wRC+: 74

Josh Smith is a second baseman for the Texas Rangers. In 2026 he hit 6 home runs and knocked in 15 RBIs, notching 43 hits across 243 plate appearances in 78 games. His batting average was .203, 16.9% lower than the league average of .244. He reached base at a .290 clip and slugged .321, for an OPS of .611, 15.0% lower than the league mark of .719 — the second worst on his team, and 386th of 465 among MLB batters with 100+ plate appearances. He averaged 84.3 mph off the bat, hit 30.2% of balls in play at 95 mph or better, barrelled 5.7% of them and made contact on 75.7% of his swings. Adjusted for his ballpark and league, his 74 wRC+ puts his offence 26% below average. That comes to 0.1 dbWAR — -8.2 runs with the bat, +0.4 for the ballpark, +0.1 on the bases, -0.3 on double plays, +1.1 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+74

wOBA.278

ISO.118

BB%10.3%

WAR.1

How the WAR is built

Runs above replacement, 2026. These terms sum to +0.5 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.


2026	TEX/TOR	78	243	43	6	15	4	25	56	.203	.290	.321	.118	.243	10.3%	23.0%	.278	-8.2	74	0.1
2025	TEX	141	563	124	10	35	12	55	100	.251	.335	.366	.115	.295	9.8%	17.8%	.314	-0.5	105	2.2
2024	TEX	148	592	135	13	62	11	46	121	.258	.337	.394	.136	.311	7.8%	20.4%	.325	+6.3	114	3.2
2023	TEX	81	232	36	6	15	1	25	55	.185	.304	.328	.144	.222	10.8%	23.7%	.289	-6.0	75	0.1
2022	TEX	73	253	42	2	16	4	28	50	.197	.307	.249	.052	.244	11.1%	19.8%	.264	-9.6	66	-0.3

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	33	30	3	0	1	13	.100	.129	.100	.110	39.4%
vs RHP	210	182	40	6	24	43	.220	.314	.357	.303	20.5%

Spray chart

Where every ball he put in play landed, 2026.

Loading 159 batted balls…

Contact quality

How hard and at what angle he hits it, over 159 tracked batted balls in 2026. Percentiles are against qualified batters.

Barrel rate: 5.7%
Exit velocity: 84.3
Max exit velo: 108.1
Hard hit: 30.2%
Sweet spot: 35.2%
Launch angle: 14.4°

Barrel rate5.7%

Exit velocity84.3 mph

Hard hit rate30.2%

Contact rate75.7%

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, 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 Josh Smith 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	243	—	—	—	—	—	—	.203	.290	.321	.278
Bases empty	140	129	26	5	5	10	34	.202	.264	.341	.271
Runner on first	51	45	12	1	3	4	11	.267	.327	.422	.330
Runners on	103	83	17	1	10	15	22	.205	.327	.289	.286
RISP	52	38	5	0	7	11	11	.132	.327	.132	.244

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

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Similar players

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

Tommy TroyAZ

wRC+: 79
HR: 4
AVG: .217
WAR: 0.1

Very close

Moisés BallesterosCHC

wRC+: 70
HR: 9
AVG: .215
WAR: -0.4

J.T. RealmutoPHI

wRC+: 68
HR: 11
AVG: .205
WAR: 0.6

Marcus SemienNYM

wRC+: 73
HR: 15
AVG: .215
WAR: 0.2

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.