Players · S · RF · 2026 regular season

Matt Shaw

Age: 25
B/T: R/R
Height: 5' 10"
Weight: 185 lb
Number: #6

Born: November 6, 2001 in Springfield, MA, United States
MLB debut: March 18, 2025
Drafted: 2023, round 1
College: Maryland

Compare with…vs George Springer vs Cody Bellinger vs Kyle Tucker

dbWAR: 2.3
PA: 202
AVG: .237
OBP: .327
SLG: .410
wRC+: 106

Matt Shaw is a right fielder for the Chicago Cubs. In 2026 he hit 5 home runs and knocked in 24 RBIs, notching 41 hits across 202 plate appearances in 71 games. His batting average was .237, 2.9% lower than the league average of .244. He reached base at a .327 clip and slugged .410, for an OPS of .737, 2.5% higher than the league mark of .719 — 7th of 13 on his team, and 163rd of 465 among MLB batters with 100+ plate appearances. He averaged 84.6 mph off the bat, hit 34.3% of balls in play at 95 mph or better, barrelled 3.5% of them and made contact on 79.9% of his swings. Adjusted for his ballpark and league, his 106 wRC+ puts his offence 6% above average. That comes to 0.8 dbWAR — +1.6 runs with the bat, -0.1 for the ballpark, -0.3 on the bases, +1.2 on double plays, -1.0 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+106

wOBA.328

ISO.173

BB%10.4%

WAR.8

How the WAR is built

Runs above replacement, 2026. These terms sum to +7.6 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	CHC	71	202	41	5	24	4	21	35	.237	.327	.410	.173	.267	10.4%	17.3%	.328	+1.6	106	0.8
2025	CHC	123	437	89	13	44	17	38	94	.226	.295	.394	.168	.262	8.7%	21.5%	.302	-4.8	91	1.5

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 Shaw's postseason batting, by October and round. Not part of any regular-season figure on this page.
Season	Team	Round	G	PA	AB	H	RBI	BB	SO	SB	AVG	OBP	SLG	OPS
2026 Post	CHC	Wild Card · through Sep 30	1	3	2	0	0	1	1	0	.000	.333	.000	.333
2025 Post	CHC	Postseason total	8	23	17	2	1	5	7	1	.118	.318	.118	.436
		Wild Card	3	8	7	0	0	0	5	0	.000	.000	.000	.000
		NLDS	5	15	10	2	1	5	2	1	.200	.467	.200	.667
Career		Postseason total · 2 Octobers	9	26	19	2	1	6	8	1	.105	.320	.105	.425

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	98	83	23	2	11	15	.277	.371	.470	.370	15.3%
vs RHP	104	90	18	3	10	20	.200	.284	.356	.288	19.2%

Spray chart

Where every ball he put in play landed, 2026.

Loading 143 batted balls…

Contact quality

How hard and at what angle he hits it, over 143 tracked batted balls in 2026. Percentiles are against qualified batters.

Barrel rate: 3.5%
Exit velocity: 84.6
Max exit velo: 107.9
Hard hit: 34.3%
Sweet spot: 32.9%
Launch angle: 15.6°

Barrel rate3.5%

Exit velocity84.6 mph

Hard hit rate34.3%

Contact rate79.9%

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 Shaw 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	202	—	—	—	—	—	—	.237	.327	.410	.328
Bases empty	97	87	20	3	3	10	16	.230	.309	.402	.316
Runner on first	51	43	14	1	4	4	6	.326	.396	.512	.398
Runners on	105	86	21	2	21	11	19	.244	.343	.419	.339
RISP	54	43	7	1	17	7	13	.163	.296	.326	.286

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.

George SpringerTOR

wRC+: 103
HR: 15
AVG: .249
WAR: 0.7

Very close

Drew GilbertSF

wRC+: 105
HR: 11
AVG: .238
WAR: 1.3

Very close

Anthony SeiglerBOS

wRC+: 102
HR: 3
AVG: .247
WAR: 0.8

Very close

Cody BellingerNYY

wRC+: 111
HR: 17
AVG: .266
WAR: 2.4

Very close

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.