Players · M · 2B · 2026 regular season

Matt McLain

Cincinnati Reds National League Central2B

Age: 27
B/T: R/R
Height: 5' 8"
Weight: 180 lb
Number: #9

Born: August 6, 1999 in Orange, CA, United States
MLB debut: May 15, 2023
Drafted: 2018, round 1
College: UCLA
High school: Beckman
Salary, 2026: $2.3M

Compare with…vs Cedric Mullins vs Jarren Duran vs Evan Carter

dbWAR: 5.7
PA: 496
AVG: .185
OBP: .274
SLG: .334
wRC+: 71

Matt McLain is a second baseman for the Cincinnati Reds. In 2026 he hit 15 home runs and knocked in 40 RBIs, notching 81 hits across 496 plate appearances in 130 games. His batting average was .185, 24.0% lower than the league average of .244. He reached base at a .274 clip and slugged .334, for an OPS of .608, 15.4% lower than the league mark of .719 — 13th of 18 on his team, and 391st of 465 among MLB batters with 100+ plate appearances. He averaged 86.2 mph off the bat, hit 36.0% of balls in play at 95 mph or better, barrelled 9.0% of them and made contact on 71.6% of his swings. Adjusted for his ballpark and league, his 71 wRC+ puts his offence 29% below average. That comes to 0.7 dbWAR — -18.0 runs with the bat, +0.8 for the ballpark, +1.8 on the bases, +2.0 on double plays, +5.0 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+71

wOBA.275

ISO.149

BB%9.7%

WAR.7

How the WAR is built

Runs above replacement, 2026. These terms sum to +6.9 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	CIN	130	496	81	15	40	20	48	139	.185	.274	.334	.149	.232	9.7%	28.0%	.275	-18.0	71	0.7
2025	CIN	145	577	112	15	50	18	55	167	.220	.300	.343	.124	.292	9.5%	28.9%	.289	-12.4	82	1.3
2023	CIN	88	403	106	16	50	14	31	115	.290	.357	.507	.216	.385	7.7%	28.5%	.372	+17.7	136	3.7

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 Matt McLain'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	3B	HR	RBI	BB	SO	SB	AVG	OBP	SLG	OPS
2025 Post	CIN	Wild Card	2	8	7	1	2	1	0	0	0	1	5	0	.286	.375	.429	.804

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	126	107	26	6	16	29	.243	.347	.430	.344	23.0%
vs RHP	370	330	55	9	32	110	.167	.249	.303	.251	29.7%

Spray chart

Where every ball he put in play landed, 2026.

Loading 303 batted balls…

Contact quality

How hard and at what angle he hits it, over 300 tracked batted balls in 2026. Percentiles are against qualified batters.

Barrel rate: 9.0%
Exit velocity: 86.2
Max exit velo: 110.5
Hard hit: 36.0%
Sweet spot: 38.0%
Launch angle: 19.1°

Barrel rate9.0%

Exit velocity86.2 mph

Hard hit rate36.0%

Contact rate71.6%

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 Matt McLain 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	496	—	—	—	—	—	—	.185	.274	.334	.275
Bases empty	298	265	53	8	8	29	71	.200	.289	.332	.283
Runner on first	100	89	16	5	11	8	35	.180	.263	.404	.293
Runners on	198	172	28	7	32	19	68	.163	.251	.337	.261
RISP	98	83	12	2	21	11	33	.145	.240	.265	.228

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.

Evan CarterTEX

wRC+: 73
HR: 9
AVG: .194
WAR: 0.8

Jarren DuranBOS

wRC+: 69
HR: 20
AVG: .207
WAR: -0.5

Ramón LaureanoSD

wRC+: 86
HR: 7
AVG: .203
WAR: 0.3

Cedric MullinsTB

wRC+: 75
HR: 15
AVG: .205
WAR: 0.5

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.