DataBaseball
2026
Jacob Young headshot

Players · Y · CF · 2026 regular season

Jacob Young

Age
27
B/T
R/R
Height
5' 11"
Weight
192 lb
Number
#30
Born
July 27, 1999 in Ponte Vedra, FL, United States
MLB debut
August 26, 2023
Drafted
2021, round 7
College
Florida

Compare with…vs Josh Naylorvs Brayan Rocchiovs Pedro Ramírez

dbWAR
3.3
Regular season, 4 season(s)
PA
471
AVG
.252
OBP
.318
SLG
.390
wRC+
94
100 = avg

Jacob Young is a center fielder for the Washington Nationals. In 2026 he hit 10 home runs and knocked in 50 RBIs, notching 106 hits across 471 plate appearances in 131 games. His batting average was .252, 3.2% higher than the league average of .244. He reached base at a .318 clip and slugged .390, for an OPS of .707, 1.6% lower than the league mark of .719 — 9th of 16 on his team, and 227th of 465 among MLB batters with 100+ plate appearances. He averaged 86.4 mph off the bat, hit 31.5% of balls in play at 95 mph or better, barrelled 5.2% of them and made contact on 79.2% of his swings. Adjusted for his ballpark and league, his 94 wRC+ puts his offence 6% below average. That comes to 1.9 dbWAR — -1.3 runs with the bat, -1.2 for the ballpark, +1.3 on the bases, +1.3 on double plays, +3.5 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+94
wOBA.315
ISO.138
BB%7.0%
WAR1.9

How the WAR is built

Runs above replacement, 2026. These terms sum to +18.1 runs, divided by runs-per-win to give WAR. There is no fielding term.

Batting-1.3Ballpark-1.2Baserunning+1.3Double plays+1.3Position+3.5Replacement+14.6
BattingBallparkBaserunningDouble playsPositionReplacement

WAR by season

1.90.8-0.323242526

Batting Regular season

Standard and advanced, by season. Regular-season games only.

Trend
2026WSH1314711061050183378.252.318.390.138.2867.0%16.6%.315-1.3941.9
2025WSH11036475231152765.231.296.287.056.2837.4%17.9%.267-14.666-0.3
2024WSH1475211203363330102.256.316.331.075.3215.8%19.6%.292-8.7861.2
2023WSH3312127012131022.252.322.336.084.3188.3%18.2%.297-2.3830.5

Platoon splits

How he hits left- and right-handed pitching.

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.
SplitPAABHHRBBSOAVGOBPSLGwOBAK%
vs LHP1691494231427.282.353.423.34516.0%
vs RHP3022726471951.235.298.371.29816.9%

Spray chart

Where every ball he put in play landed, 2026.

Loading 348 batted balls…

Contact quality

How hard and at what angle he hits it, over 349 tracked batted balls in 2026. Percentiles are against qualified batters.

Barrel rate
5.2%
18 barrels
Exit velocity
86.4
mph average
Max exit velo
110.1
mph, hardest hit
Hard hit
31.5%
95 mph or better
Sweet spot
37.5%
8–32° launch
Launch angle
12.2°
average
Barrel rate5.2%
Exit velocity86.4 mph
Hard hit rate31.5%
Contact rate79.2%

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.

.250.438.192.241.20035 AB.28621 AB.15020 AB.21746 AB.25551 AB.24262 AB.20015 AB.36444 AB.22935 AB
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 Jacob Young 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.
SituationPAABHHRRBIBBSOAVGOBPSLGwOBA
All situations471——————.252.318.390.315
Bases empty24622954441443.236.289.362.290
Runner on first118102274111220.265.353.441.353
Runners on225192526461935.271.350.422.343
RISP1079025235715.278.346.400.331

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

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Jacob Young

Similar players

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

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.