Works counts and puts the ball in play; modest slug.
A disciplined contact hitter
Brendan Donovan rarely strikes out — less often than 90% of qualified hitters. The contact is soft, though — only 38% of qualified hitters hit the ball with less authority.
Each spoke is a skill estimate adjusted for sample size — not raw season stats — so farther out = better.
Percentiles vs. 463 qualified hitters.
Data through 2026-07-15.
Plays like…
Same archetype, nearest by rate — the hitters whose profile looks most like this one.
Every plate appearance ends one of three ways: a strikeout (0 bases), a walk (1 base), or a ball in play worth its estimated bases.
The bar splits his value into those pieces, versus the league.
More bases is better. In the table, 100th percentile = best in MLB.
Ball-in-play basesWalk bases
Bases per plate appearance
.329
.109
Brendan Donovan
.351
.084
League average
What a replacement bat would have done
over Brendan Donovan's 101 plate appearances
44
Brendan Donovan
36
Replacement level
▲ +8 bases above replacement (created 44 vs 36)
Brendan Donovan
League
Percentile
Bases per ball in play(higher = better)
.488
.510
79th
Walk rate(higher = better)
11%
8%
80th
Strikeout rate(fewer = better)
15%
23%
90th
Platoon splits
Platoon splits (EB/PA)
Dot = shrunk true-talent estimate; bar = 89% credible interval.
Faint diamond = his raw, unshrunk rate against that hand — small samples make it noisy, which is why the model pulls the dot toward a more trustworthy estimate.
Shrunk splits beat raw splits decisively at low PA counts and converge with them as playing time builds — individual platoon gaps need roughly 1,000+ PA vs a hand before the raw number alone can be trusted.
Headline EB/PA (0.486)
vs LHP24 PA0.418
vs LHP: shrunk estimate 0.418 EB/PA, 89% credible interval 0.349 to 0.485, based on 24 plate appearances. Raw (unshrunk) rate: 0.253 EB/PA.
Raw vs LHP rate (0.253) is off this scale — small samples like this are exactly why the shrunk estimate (the dot) is the trustworthy number, not the raw one.
vs RHP77 PA0.508
vs RHP: shrunk estimate 0.508 EB/PA, 89% credible interval 0.442 to 0.568, based on 77 plate appearances. Raw (unshrunk) rate: 0.560 EB/PA.
0.3220.3900.4580.5270.595
0.089 EB/PA better vs RHP than vs LHP (shrunk estimate).
89% credible interval: +0.054 to +0.130
How he hits
Hits it to Pull most often, and does the most damage there too.
Best batted balls
Where every ball Brendan Donovan put in play landed this season.
Dots are colored by estimated bases (EB) — pale slate (easy out) to dark teal (home-run territory).
Filled dots are hits; hollow rings are outs — a dark ring in the outfield is a crushed ball that got caught.
Hover a dot or a row to link the two; click to watch on Baseball Savant.
