Players · M · RF · 2026 regular season

Victor Mesa Jr.

Age: 25
B/T: L/L
Height: 5' 11"
Weight: 195 lb
Number: #25

Born: September 8, 2001 in Havana, Cuba
MLB debut: May 26, 2025

Compare with…vs Brice Turang vs Byron Buxton vs Jake Bauers

dbWAR: 1.5
PA: 262
AVG: .255
OBP: .323
SLG: .489
wRC+: 123

Victor Mesa Jr. is a right fielder for the Tampa Bay Rays. In 2026 he hit 14 home runs and knocked in 34 RBIs, notching 60 hits across 262 plate appearances in 74 games. His batting average was .255, 4.6% higher than the league average of .244. He reached base at a .323 clip and slugged .489, for an OPS of .812, 13.0% higher than the league mark of .719 — the second best on his team, and 61st of 465 among MLB batters with 100+ plate appearances. He averaged 87.4 mph off the bat, hit 42.2% of balls in play at 95 mph or better, barrelled 9.7% of them and made contact on 74.5% of his swings. Adjusted for his ballpark and league, his 123 wRC+ puts his offence 23% above average. That comes to 1.4 dbWAR — +7.3 runs with the bat, -0.0 for the ballpark, -0.2 on the bases, +0.7 on double plays, -2.1 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+123

wOBA.352

ISO.234

BB%8.8%

WAR1.4

How the WAR is built

Runs above replacement, 2026. These terms sum to +13.9 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.

																					Trend
2026	TB	74	262	60	14	34	9	23	53	.255	.323	.489	.234	.272	8.8%	20.2%	.352	+7.3	123	1.4
2025	MIA	14	38	6	1	6	0	5	5	.188	.297	.344	.156	.192	13.2%	13.2%	.291	-0.7	87	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 Victor Mesa Jr.'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	HR	RBI	BB	SO	SB	AVG	OBP	SLG	OPS
2026 Post	TB	Postseason total · through Oct 28	14	48	43	4	6	1	2	5	17	2	.140	.229	.209	.438
		ALDS	3	11	10	1	2	1	2	1	4	1	.200	.273	.500	.773
		ALCS	6	23	21	3	2	0	0	2	8	1	.095	.174	.095	.269
		World Series	5	14	12	0	2	0	0	2	5	0	.167	.286	.167	.452

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	66	60	19	2	5	9	.317	.369	.450	.363	13.6%
vs RHP	196	175	41	12	18	44	.234	.308	.503	.349	22.4%

Spray chart

Where every ball he put in play landed, 2026.

Loading 185 batted balls…

Contact quality

How hard and at what angle he hits it, over 185 tracked batted balls in 2026. Percentiles are against qualified batters.

Barrel rate: 9.7%
Exit velocity: 87.4
Max exit velo: 110.4
Hard hit: 42.2%
Sweet spot: 33.0%
Launch angle: 19.8°

Barrel rate9.7%

Exit velocity87.4 mph

Hard hit rate42.2%

Contact rate74.5%

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 Victor Mesa Jr. 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	262	—	—	—	—	—	—	.255	.323	.489	.352
Bases empty	156	140	37	11	12	15	25	.264	.340	.564	.387
Runner on first	51	47	11	2	5	4	17	.234	.294	.362	.294
Runners on	106	95	23	3	22	8	28	.242	.298	.379	.300
RISP	55	48	12	1	17	4	11	.250	.302	.396	.306

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

Compare Victor Mesa Jr. with…

Side by side with up to three others.

Compare with… add up to 3 more players

Victor Mesa Jr.

Or read one already written — Victor Mesa Jr. against:

Similar players

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

Zack GelofATH

wRC+: 107
HR: 22
AVG: .256
WAR: 2.5

CJ AbramsWSH

wRC+: 123
HR: 33
AVG: .261
WAR: 5.3

Sal StewartCIN

wRC+: 119
HR: 32
AVG: .263
WAR: 2.9

Byron BuxtonMIN

wRC+: 128
HR: 25
AVG: .254
WAR: 2.9

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.