Josh Donaldson
The 2015 American League MVP belongs to a dying breed — the complete third baseman who could anchor both sides of the ball. Donaldson's peak came during that magical Toronto season, when his .939 OPS and 41 homers helped power the Blue Jays to their first playoff appearance in 22 years.
What made him special wasn't just the pop — though 279 career homers from the hot corner speaks for itself. Donaldson combined elite plate discipline with Gold Glove-caliber defense, posting a career 110 OPS+ across 14 seasons despite playing one of baseball's most demanding positions.
The Auburn product's career trajectory tells the modern game's story in miniature: a grinder who peaked late, dominated for a brief window, then hung around longer than his body wanted. His MVP campaign remains one of the decade's great individual seasons, a reminder that third base success requires equal parts power and precision.
Career · Batting
13 seasons| Year | Team | G | AB | HR | RBI | AVG | OPS | OPS+ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2010 | ATH | 14 | 32 | 1 | 4 | .156 | .487 | 67 |
| 2012 | ATH | 75 | 274 | 9 | 33 | .241 | .687 | 95 |
| 2013 | ATH | 158 | 579 | 24 | 93 | .301 | .883 | 124 |
| 2014 | ATH | 158 | 608 | 29 | 98 | .255 | .798 | 114 |
| 2015 | TOR | 158 | 620 | 41 | 123 | .297 | .939 | 130 |
| 2016 | TOR | 155 | 577 | 37 | 99 | .284 | .953 | 129 |
| 2017 | TOR | 113 | 415 | 33 | 78 | .270 | .944 | 126 |
| 2018 | TOR | 52 | 187 | 8 | 23 | .246 | .801 | 110 |
| 2019 | ATL | 155 | 549 | 37 | 94 | .259 | .900 | 119 |
| 2020 | MIN | 28 | 81 | 6 | 11 | .222 | .842 | 114 |
| 2021 | MIN | 135 | 457 | 26 | 72 | .247 | .827 | 114 |
| 2022 | NYY | 132 | 478 | 15 | 62 | .222 | .682 | 97 |
| 2023 | NYY | 51 | 165 | 13 | 26 | .152 | .667 | 91 |
| Career | 1384 | 5022 | 279 | 816 | .261 | — | — | |
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.