Matt Holliday
The thin air of Colorado never had a better friend than Matt Holliday. His 2007 breakout season wasn't just career-defining — it was physics in action. That .340 average and 1.012 OPS represented peak Coors Field optimization, where his natural swing plane met the mile-high atmosphere in perfect harmony.
What made Holliday special was his consistency after leaving Colorado. Moving to St. Louis in 2009, he proved the breakout was real, maintaining an OPS+ of 119 over his entire career while collecting four Silver Sluggers. That's elite offensive production across two dramatically different environments.
Seven All-Star selections tell the story of a hitter who adapted and thrived anywhere. His 316 home runs and .299 career average represent old-school middle-of-the-order reliability in an era increasingly defined by all-or-nothing approaches.
Career · Batting
15 seasons| Year | Team | G | AB | HR | RBI | AVG | OPS | OPS+ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2004 | COL | 121 | 400 | 14 | 57 | .290 | .837 | 110 |
| 2005 | COL | 125 | 479 | 19 | 87 | .307 | .866 | 116 |
| 2006 | COL | 155 | 602 | 34 | 114 | .326 | .973 | 127 |
| 2007 | COL | 158 | 636 | 36 | 137 | .340 | 1.012 | 133 |
| 2008 | COL | 139 | 539 | 25 | 88 | .321 | .947 | 126 |
| 2009 | ATH | 156 | 581 | 24 | 109 | .313 | .909 | 121 |
| 2010 | STL | 158 | 596 | 28 | 103 | .312 | .922 | 127 |
| 2011 | STL | 124 | 446 | 22 | 75 | .296 | .912 | 127 |
| 2012 | STL | 157 | 599 | 27 | 102 | .295 | .877 | 121 |
| 2013 | STL | 141 | 520 | 22 | 94 | .300 | .879 | 123 |
| 2014 | STL | 156 | 574 | 20 | 90 | .272 | .811 | 116 |
| 2015 | STL | 73 | 229 | 4 | 35 | .279 | .804 | 111 |
| 2016 | STL | 110 | 382 | 20 | 62 | .246 | .782 | 106 |
| 2017 | NYY | 105 | 373 | 19 | 64 | .231 | .748 | 100 |
| 2018 | COL | 25 | 53 | 2 | 3 | .283 | .849 | 117 |
| Career | 1903 | 7009 | 316 | 1220 | .299 | — | — | |
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.