Players · D · C · 2026 regular season

Yainer Diaz

Age: 28
B/T: R/R
Height: 5' 11"
Weight: 195 lb
Number: #21

Born: September 21, 1998 in Azua, Dominican Republic
MLB debut: September 2, 2022
Salary, 2026: $4.5M

Compare with…vs Miguel Vargas vs Michael Harris II vs Chase Meidroth

dbWAR: 9.1
PA: 361
AVG: .285
OBP: .313
SLG: .459
wRC+: 114

Yainer Diaz is a catcher for the Houston Astros. In 2026 he hit 14 home runs and knocked in 45 RBIs, notching 98 hits across 361 plate appearances in 93 games. His batting average was .285, 16.8% higher than the league average of .244. He reached base at a .313 clip and slugged .459, for an OPS of .772, 7.4% higher than the league mark of .719 — 5th of 15 on his team, and 105th of 465 among MLB batters with 100+ plate appearances. He averaged 89.3 mph off the bat, hit 38.8% of balls in play at 95 mph or better, barrelled 6.2% of them and made contact on 77.7% of his swings. Adjusted for his ballpark and league, his 114 wRC+ puts his offence 14% above average. That comes to 2.0 dbWAR — +4.9 runs with the bat, +0.5 for the ballpark, -1.3 on the bases, -0.9 on double plays, +5.1 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+114

wOBA.335

ISO.174

BB%3.3%

WAR2.0

How the WAR is built

Runs above replacement, 2026. These terms sum to +19.4 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	HOU	93	361	98	14	45	0	12	57	.285	.313	.459	.174	.305	3.3%	15.8%	.335	+4.9	114	2.0
2025	HOU	143	567	139	20	70	1	20	95	.256	.284	.417	.161	.277	3.5%	16.8%	.301	-6.8	91	1.6
2024	HOU	148	619	175	16	84	2	24	107	.299	.325	.441	.142	.338	3.9%	17.3%	.330	+9.1	111	3.1
2023	HOU	104	377	100	23	60	0	11	74	.282	.308	.538	.256	.292	2.9%	19.6%	.354	+10.8	125	2.3
2022	HOU	4	9	1	0	1	0	1	2	.125	.222	.250	.125	.167	11.1%	22.2%	.221	-0.7	36	-0.1

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 Yainer Diaz'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	RBI	BB	SO	AVG	OBP	SLG	OPS
2026 Post	HOU	Wild Card · through Sep 30	2	8	8	0	0	0	0	4	.000	.000	.000	.000
2024 Post	HOU	Wild Card	2	8	7	0	2	1	1	1	.286	.375	.286	.661
2023 Post	HOU	Postseason total	7	14	14	1	1	0	0	5	.071	.071	.071	.143
		ALDS	2	6	6	0	0	0	0	4	.000	.000	.000	.000
		ALCS	5	8	8	1	1	0	0	1	.125	.125	.125	.250
Career		Postseason total · 3 Octobers	11	30	29	1	3	1	1	10	.103	.133	.103	.237

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	96	91	28	2	4	18	.308	.344	.462	.352	18.8%
vs RHP	265	253	70	12	8	39	.277	.302	.458	.328	14.7%

Spray chart

Where every ball he put in play landed, 2026.

Loading 289 batted balls…

Contact quality

How hard and at what angle he hits it, over 289 tracked batted balls in 2026. Percentiles are against qualified batters.

Barrel rate: 6.2%
Exit velocity: 89.3
Max exit velo: 110.3
Hard hit: 38.8%
Sweet spot: 30.4%
Launch angle: 7.5°

Barrel rate6.2%

Exit velocity89.3 mph

Hard hit rate38.8%

Contact rate77.7%

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 Yainer Diaz 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	361	—	—	—	—	—	—	.285	.313	.459	.335
Bases empty	204	195	49	10	11	6	34	.251	.284	.462	.322
Runner on first	68	67	24	3	9	1	9	.358	.368	.567	.402
Runners on	157	149	49	4	34	6	23	.329	.350	.456	.351
RISP	89	82	25	1	25	5	14	.305	.337	.366	.312

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.

Keibert RuizWSH

wRC+: 105
HR: 10
AVG: .283
WAR: 2.0

Michael MasseyKC

wRC+: 93
HR: 13
AVG: .270
WAR: 1.4

Michael Harris IIATL

wRC+: 120
HR: 26
AVG: .294
WAR: 4.4

Brooks LeeMIN

wRC+: 101
HR: 24
AVG: .253
WAR: 2.5

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.