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Sebastián Rivero

2026
Angels· C · bats R · throws R· 57 PA
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Grade

How good he's been, and at what
Fbetter than 6% of hitters at creating bases

His season is in line with his established level.

Free-Swinging Contact

Bat-to-ball first, seldom walks, light power.

Soft contact is the story so far

Sebastián Rivero keeps the strikeouts in check — strikes out less often than 49% of qualified hitters. The contact is soft, though — only 2% of qualified hitters hit the ball with less authority. Early-season read — only 57 plate appearances so far.

57 plate appearances · data through 2026-08-22.

How to read this chart
Each spoke is a skill estimate adjusted for sample size — not raw season stats — so farther out = better. Spokes are the metric itself; ↓ marks a rate where a LOWER number is better. Percentiles vs. 499 qualified hitters — 50+ plate appearances.

Plays like…

Same archetype, nearest by rate — pick one to see him side by side with Sebastián Rivero.

Nick FortesRaysRafael MarchánPhilliesBen WilliamsonRaysTyler HeinemanAngels

Hitter type

What kind of hitter he is, next to the league

Hitter type

Weak contact quality.

How to read this chart
Two skills separate hitting styles: not giving away at-bats (walk rate minus strikeout rate) and squaring the ball up when he does put it in play (hard-hit rate). Every dot is a qualified hitter this season; dot size tracks plate appearances. Click any dot to open that hitter's page.
 Sebastián RiveroLeague medianPercentile
Bases per ball in play(higher = better).398.5086th
Walk rate(higher = better)5%8%23rd
Strikeout rate(lower = better)21%23%49th

100th percentile = best in MLB.

Platoon splits

How he fares against lefties and righties

Platoon splits (EB/PA)

Better vs LHP than vs RHP by 0.032 EB/PA (modeled).

50% probable range: +0.012 to +0.052

vs LHP14 PA0.393

vs LHP: shrunk estimate 0.393 EB/PA, 50% probable range 0.363 to 0.421, based on 14 plate appearances. Raw (unshrunk) rate: 0.265 EB/PA. League median vs LHP: 0.425 EB/PA.

Raw vs LHP rate (0.265) 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 RHP42 PA0.362

vs RHP: shrunk estimate 0.362 EB/PA, 50% probable range 0.333 to 0.386, based on 42 plate appearances. Raw (unshrunk) rate: 0.381 EB/PA. League median vs RHP: 0.436 EB/PA.

0.3210.3530.3840.4160.448
← worsebetter →
Above league medianBelow50% probable rangeHis raw rateMiddle half of the league

About the typical split for a righty bat (median 0.034). He sits below the league median against both hands.

He sits in the league's middle half vs lefties and the league's bottom quarter vs righties.

How to read this chart
  • Tap or hover any mark for its number, or tab to a row for all of them.
  • His raw rate is the unshrunk number against that hand — small samples make it noisy, which is why the model pulls his estimate toward a more trustworthy value.
  • “Middle half of the league” is the 25th–75th percentile of all hitters against that hand.
  • 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.

How he hits

What happens when he puts a ball in play

He hits the ball up the middle most often, and that's where his hardest contact goes.

Best batted balls

Where every ball Sebastián Rivero put in play landed this season.
hit · out
EBlowhigh
vs Clay HolmesSingle
EV 81 mph · LA 21° · EB 1.7
05/03 vs Mets
vs Kyle HurtDouble
EV 103 mph · LA 16° · EB 1.5
06/07 vs Dodgers
vs Jonathan HernándezSingle
EV 84 mph · LA 16° · EB 1.0
06/07 vs Dodgers
vs Jonathan HernándezSingle
EV 73 mph · LA 25° · EB 1.0
06/07 vs Dodgers
vs Davis MartinSingle
EV 81 mph · LA 17° · EB 1.0
04/28 vs White Sox

Luck check

3 lucky hits — balls with a hit probability under 20% that found grass.

vs Blake TreinenSingleLucky
EV 56 mph · LA 26° · EB 0.1 · xBA .102
06/07 vs Dodgers
How to read this chart
Dot color is estimated bases (EB) — what the contact was worth, regardless of what the defense did with it. So a dark hollow ring in the outfield is a crushed ball that got caught. Tap or hover a dot or a row to link the two, and use the ▶ links to watch a play on Baseball Savant.

Performance by pitch type

2026 · 228 pitches

Bases he adds per 100 pitches of each type, against the league.

← below leagueabove league →
Four-Seam Fastball (77 pitches)
−0.3
Lg median −0.4Lg best +12.9
Other (151 pitches)

−3.5 bases per 100 · no single-type league comparison

Above league medianBelowMiddle half of the leagueLg medianLg best
How to read this chart
Bases added per 100 pitches of each type — the same scale as the pitcher pages’ “saved/cost per 100”, from the hitter’s side. Every pitch counts: taking a ball adds value, whiffing loses it, and the pitch that ends the plate appearance scores its outcome against the count’s expectation. Values are bases vs the league count-average: +3.5 means his results against that pitch have been worth about 3.5 extra bases per 100 seen. Types with fewer than 50 pitches seen pool into “Other”.

Swing

How fast he swings, and what he changes with two strikes. League tracking starts in 2024.

Swing at a glance

2026 · data through 2026-08-22
Bat speed · 128 swings
69.2 mph
Lg median 71.1 mph
Slowest: S. Kwan (61.9 mph)Fastest: J. Caminero (78.7 mph)
Lg median

Swings slower than most hitters. His swing length and attack angle both sit in the league's middle range. Cuts his swing down about as much as most hitters with two strikes. His bat travels on a fairly typical path.

Attack angle
7.3°
Lg median 9.4°
Swing length
7.3 ft
Lg median 7.3 ft
Swing path tilt
33.4°
Lg median 31.6°
Middle half of the league
How to read this chart
  • Competitive swings: bunts and checked-type swings under 50 mph are excluded, so these numbers sit a touch below the bat speeds Savant publishes, which use a different cut.
  • League tracking starts in 2024, and early 2024 has small gaps — about 93% of swings that season have a reading.
  • Swing length — how far the sweet spot of the bat travels during the swing.
  • Attack angle — the bat’s upward or downward tilt through the zone.
  • Swing path tilt — how steep the bat’s path is.
  • None of these is better or worse on its own — swing style trades power against contact (the fastest and slowest swings in the league both belong to stars).

How he sets up

Where he stands in the box and how his feet are set, next to the league-average setup.

How he sets up

A typical setup — close to league average in depth, off-plate distance, width, and angle.

Top-down batting stance vs league averagePitcher ↑
His feetLg avg
How to read this chart
  • Overhead view of the batter’s box. The dots are his feet, reconstructed from Statcast’s stance measurements — hip position, foot separation, and stance angle — about one second before the pitch. It’s an approximation of his setup, not his stride or swing.
  • Open means his front foot is pulled off the line to the plate; closed means it steps toward it. The average hitter sets up slightly open.
  • The change line above only appears for a sustained month-over-month move that clears normal Statcast noise by a wide margin.
  • The chart is his month-by-month average for whichever measure you pick, this season only. A month needs 25 tracked swings to appear, so an injured or platooned month can be missing. The shaded band and dashed line are where the middle half of hitters, and the median hitter, sat over their whole season.
  • On the angle chart, below zero is an open stance and above zero is a closed one — hover a point (or drag on a phone) and it says which in words.
  • Data through 2026-08-22.

Best games

His biggest games this year

Best games

His best games this season by bases above replacement.

Multi-season trends · Sebastián Rivero

BB% up, K% down vs last season

Actual rates — what happened on the field, season by season.