Wander Encarnación

Wander Encarnación Segura

• Bats Right, Throws Right
• Height 5' 8", Weight 198 lb.
• High School Institut Eugeni d'Ors

• Born January 25, 2000

Biographical Information

Wander Encarnación has played in Spain and for the Spanish national team.

He debuted in the Spanish Baseball League in 2022, hitting .490 for the champion Tenerife Marlins, fielding .965 while mostly manning third base. He was all over the leaderboards obviously: 1st in average, tied Edison Valerio for first with 9 homers, 3rd with 34 RBI (behind Roibert Decena and Leopoldo Correa), tied for 2nd with 35 runs (4 behind Emmanuel Febles), 1st with 50 hits (one ahead of Decena), 3rd in doubles (13), tied for first in triples (3), 3rd in OBP (.535) and 1st in slugging (.941, .177 ahead of #2 Edison Valerio).

In the 2023 Federations Cup, he was 6 for 16 with 2 walks, 5 runs and 3 RBI in four games as the Marlins won the title. In the SBL that season, he helped Tenerife repeat by batting .433/.497/.722 with 42 runs and 10 dingers. He was third in homers (behind Valerio and Lesther Galván), third in runs (one behind Valerio and Javier Monzón), first in hits (55, 3 more than Correa) and fifth in slugging. That earned him a spot on Spain's squad for the 2023 European Championship. Hitting 7th and playing third in the opener against Greece, he singled off Dimitri Kourtis. He went 3 for 3 that day before Carlos Colmenarez took over late in a rout. He later went deep off the Czech national team's Filip Čapka and had a 3-for-3 game in their historic 7-6 upset of the Dutch national team that ensured the Dutch would not finish 1st or 2nd, when they had always done so before. In the finale against Great Britain, he had a first-inning RBI double off Austin Hassani and came around to score then smacked a two-run bomb off Jake Esch as Spain won its first title since 1955. He finished the tournament at .550/.583/.950 with 9 runs and 11 RBI in 6 games, handling 10 chances error-free. He tied Ricardo Paolini and Graeham Luttor for 4th in the event in runs, tied for second in hits (3 behind Juremi Profar), tied for sixth with two homers, tied Ray-Patrick Didder and Philip Smith for second in RBI (one shy of Harry Ford), tied Luttor for 7th in total bases, tied Slobodan Gales for second in average (.059 behind Profar), was 7th in slugging (between Martin Červenka and Smith) and was 5th in OPS (between Sicnarf Loopstok and Červenka). He won MVP, the first Spanish player to win European Championship MVP since Xavier Civit in 2003.