Players · R · RF · 2026 regular season

John Rave

Kansas City Royals American League CentralRF

Age: 29
B/T: L/L
Height: 5' 10"
Weight: 194 lb
Number: #16

Born: December 30, 1997 in Canton, IL, United States
MLB debut: May 26, 2025
Drafted: 2019, round 5
College: Illinois State
High school: Central Catholic

Compare with…vs Dansby Swanson vs Ronald Acuña Jr.vs Jazz Chisholm Jr.

dbWAR: .6
PA: 161
AVG: .232
OBP: .314
SLG: .430
wRC+: 102

John Rave is a right fielder for the Kansas City Royals. In 2026 he hit 6 home runs and knocked in 13 RBIs, notching 33 hits across 161 plate appearances in 50 games. His batting average was .232, 4.8% lower than the league average of .244. He reached base at a .314 clip and slugged .430, for an OPS of .744, 3.5% higher than the league mark of .719 — 5th of 15 on his team, and 148th of 465 among MLB batters with 100+ plate appearances. He averaged 83.7 mph off the bat, hit 35.6% of balls in play at 95 mph or better, barrelled 8.7% of them and made contact on 75.7% of his swings. Adjusted for his ballpark and league, his 102 wRC+ puts his offence 2% above average. That comes to 0.7 dbWAR — +1.3 runs with the bat, -0.5 for the ballpark, +1.0 on the bases, +0.7 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+102

wOBA.328

ISO.197

BB%10.6%

WAR.7

How the WAR is built

Runs above replacement, 2026. These terms sum to +6.7 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.

																					Trend
2026	KC	50	161	33	6	13	8	17	38	.232	.314	.430	.197	.276	10.6%	23.6%	.328	+1.3	102	0.7
2025	KC	56	175	30	4	14	7	18	46	.196	.283	.307	.111	.250	10.3%	26.3%	.270	-6.6	70	-0.1

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	39	35	7	1	2	12	.200	.243	.371	.269	30.8%
vs RHP	122	107	26	5	15	26	.243	.336	.449	.346	21.3%

Spray chart

Where every ball he put in play landed, 2026.

Loading 105 batted balls…

Contact quality

How hard and at what angle he hits it, over 104 tracked batted balls in 2026. Percentiles are against qualified batters.

Barrel rate: 8.7%
Exit velocity: 83.7
Max exit velo: 106.5
Hard hit: 35.6%
Sweet spot: 33.3%
Launch angle: 12.2°

Barrel rate8.7%

Exit velocity83.7 mph

Hard hit rate35.6%

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 John Rave 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	161	—	—	—	—	—	—	.232	.314	.430	.328
Bases empty	87	79	21	3	3	8	19	.266	.333	.481	.355
Runner on first	37	32	6	1	2	4	7	.188	.278	.313	.271
Runners on	74	63	12	3	10	9	19	.190	.292	.365	.297
RISP	37	31	6	2	8	5	12	.194	.306	.419	.322

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.

Ronald Acuña Jr.ATL

wRC+: 120
HR: 20
AVG: .255
WAR: 2.3

Wyatt LangfordTEX

wRC+: 116
HR: 17
AVG: .241
WAR: 2.0

Dansby SwansonCHC

wRC+: 92
HR: 19
AVG: .213
WAR: 2.3

Travis BazzanaCLE

wRC+: 107
HR: 15
AVG: .245
WAR: 2.7

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.