Players · W · SS · 2026 regular season

Taylor Walls

Age: 30
B/T: S/R
Height: 5' 9"
Weight: 185 lb
Number: #6

Born: July 10, 1996 in Cordele, GA, United States
MLB debut: May 22, 2021
Drafted: 2017, round 3
College: Florida State
Salary, 2026: $2.45M

Compare with…vs Anthony Volpe vs Hyeseong Kim vs Jared Triolo

dbWAR: 2.9
PA: 433
AVG: .222
OBP: .309
SLG: .298
wRC+: 74

Taylor Walls is a shortstop for the Tampa Bay Rays. In 2026 he hit 2 home runs and knocked in 36 RBIs, notching 82 hits across 433 plate appearances in 120 games. His batting average was .222, 8.9% lower than the league average of .244. He reached base at a .309 clip and slugged .298, for an OPS of .607, 15.6% lower than the league mark of .719 — the worst on his team, and 393rd of 465 among MLB batters with 100+ plate appearances. He averaged 80.3 mph off the bat, hit 22.1% of balls in play at 95 mph or better, barrelled 1.8% of them and made contact on 78.0% of his swings. Adjusted for his ballpark and league, his 74 wRC+ puts his offence 26% below average. That comes to 1.1 dbWAR — -13.4 runs with the bat, -0.0 for the ballpark, +2.3 on the bases, +1.9 on double plays, +6.5 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.281

ISO.076

BB%10.4%

WAR1.1

How the WAR is built

Runs above replacement, 2026. These terms sum to +10.8 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	TB	120	433	82	2	36	21	45	105	.222	.309	.298	.076	.301	10.4%	24.2%	.281	-13.4	74	1.1
2025	TB	91	317	62	4	38	14	26	70	.220	.280	.319	.099	.271	8.2%	22.1%	.267	-12.5	66	0.4
2024	TB	77	252	40	1	14	16	31	67	.183	.282	.248	.064	.255	12.3%	26.6%	.249	-13.2	55	-0.0
2023	TB	93	349	61	8	36	22	44	92	.201	.305	.333	.132	.261	12.6%	26.4%	.289	-9.1	79	1.0
2022	TB	131	466	70	8	33	10	52	120	.172	.268	.285	.113	.221	11.2%	25.8%	.255	-21.3	61	0.0
2021	TB	50	176	32	1	15	4	23	49	.211	.314	.296	.086	.304	13.1%	27.8%	.283	-5.0	82	0.4

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 Taylor Walls'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	BB	SO	SB	AVG	OBP	SLG	OPS
2026 Post	TB	Postseason total · through Oct 28	14	45	39	2	4	4	15	3	.103	.186	.103	.289
		ALDS	3	10	10	0	1	0	2	0	.100	.100	.100	.200
		ALCS	6	21	17	2	3	3	7	2	.176	.300	.176	.476
		World Series	5	14	12	0	0	1	6	1	.000	.077	.000	.077
2023 Post	TB	Wild Card	2	6	6	0	2	0	1	0	.333	.333	.333	.667
2022 Post	TB	Wild Card	2	5	5	0	1	0	2	0	.200	.200	.200	.400
Career		Postseason total · 3 Octobers	18	56	50	2	7	4	18	3	.140	.204	.140	.344

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	155	133	27	1	12	33	.203	.270	.271	.249	21.3%
vs RHP	278	236	55	1	33	72	.233	.330	.314	.298	25.9%

Spray chart

Where every ball he put in play landed, 2026.

Loading 280 batted balls…

Contact quality

How hard and at what angle he hits it, over 276 tracked batted balls in 2026. Percentiles are against qualified batters.

Barrel rate: 1.8%
Exit velocity: 80.3
Max exit velo: 107.7
Hard hit: 22.1%
Sweet spot: 34.4%
Launch angle: 15.3°

Barrel rate1.8%

Exit velocity80.3 mph

Hard hit rate22.1%

Contact rate78.0%

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 Taylor Walls 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	433	—	—	—	—	—	—	.222	.309	.298	.281
Bases empty	232	206	42	1	1	22	61	.204	.287	.262	.258
Runner on first	100	87	19	1	3	10	24	.218	.306	.345	.296
Runners on	201	163	40	1	35	23	44	.245	.335	.344	.309
RISP	101	76	21	0	32	13	20	.276	.366	.342	.323

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.

Anthony VolpeNYY

wRC+: 84
HR: 2
AVG: .245
WAR: 0.8

Very close

Hyeseong KimLAD

wRC+: 85
HR: 1
AVG: .259
WAR: 0.4

Jared TrioloPIT

wRC+: 71
HR: 3
AVG: .238
WAR: 0.4

Masyn WinnSTL

wRC+: 80
HR: 5
AVG: .232
WAR: 1.2

Comparable

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.