Josh Hamilton
Hamilton's 2010 season stands as one of the most electrifying individual campaigns of the 2010s. That .359 average led the American League, while his 1.044 OPS represented a 43 percent improvement over league average. He became just the fourth player since 1990 to hit .359 with 30-plus homers.
The Rangers center fielder's peak was brief but spectacular. His 143 OPS+ that season ranked among the best by any outfielder in the decade, and it came during Texas's first World Series run. Hamilton's combination of contact ability and raw power made him nearly impossible to pitch to when locked in.
What makes his career fascinating is how compressed his excellence was. Despite playing just nine seasons, he accumulated five All-Star selections and an MVP award. His 116 career OPS+ tells the story of a player who was genuinely elite when healthy, even if the sample was smaller than typical superstars.
Career · Batting
9 seasons| Year | Team | G | AB | HR | RBI | AVG | OPS | OPS+ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2007 | CIN | 90 | 298 | 19 | 47 | .292 | .922 | 122 |
| 2008 | TEX | 156 | 624 | 32 | 130 | .304 | .901 | 120 |
| 2009 | TEX | 89 | 336 | 10 | 54 | .268 | .741 | 99 |
| 2010 | TEX | 133 | 518 | 32 | 100 | .359 | 1.044 | 143 |
| 2011 | TEX | 121 | 487 | 25 | 94 | .298 | .882 | 123 |
| 2012 | TEX | 148 | 562 | 43 | 128 | .285 | .930 | 128 |
| 2013 | LAA | 151 | 576 | 21 | 79 | .250 | .739 | 103 |
| 2014 | LAA | 89 | 338 | 10 | 44 | .263 | .745 | 106 |
| 2015 | TEX | 50 | 170 | 8 | 25 | .253 | .732 | 101 |
| Career | 1027 | 3909 | 200 | 701 | .290 | — | — | |
Every ball this hitter has put in play — how hard it left the bat, and at what angle. The red field behind the dots shows how much damage that kind of contact does, league-wide: the darker the red, the better things go for the hitter.
The field — league-average xwOBA (what a batted ball is typically worth: 0.0 is a sure out, ~2.0 a sure home run) for every exit-velocity × launch-angle combination, measured from 1.3 million regular-season balls in play since 2015. The dark ridge — balls hit 105+ mph at 25–30° — is the barrel zone, where contact becomes near-automatic extra bases.
The dots — this hitter’s career regular-season balls in play, grouped to a fine grid; a bigger dot means more batted balls at that exact combination. Dots piled onto the red ridge are damage; dots low on the pale field are weak or mishit contact. Spring training and the postseason are excluded.
Matchups, projections, comps — grounded in Lahman, Retrosheet, and Statcast.