Defend The Indefensible : The Shift

Maybe my fave moment at the SABR convention 3 weeks ago was a panel hosted by Brian Kenny, and one topic was how to raise the number of "balls in play" per game. (Whether that even 'needs' to be done wasn't questioned. I like HRs and strikeouts myself.)

Mark DeRosa went into a long sob story about how his buddy Brian McCann, a pull hitter, had a lousy stint with the Yankees because his traditional hits were now being hit directly into shifts. “To me, the hardest thing to do in sports is to hit a baseball. And now you’re asking us to manipulate it to all parts of the field. There’s a good percentage of the guys that cannot do that, period...." Almost immediately, DeRosa started getting heckled from the second row of the audience.

"Too bad!" "Be a better hitter!"

Presumably, you can hear that here:

https://sabr.org/latest/sabr-47-listen-highlights-mlb-now-panel-brian-kenny

hahaha

Another look at that Astros' infield defense vs. Joey Gallo ... pic.twitter.com/elS08AIkvM

— Travis Sawchik (@Travis_Sawchik) April 3, 2018

daniel murphy, kyle seager and matt carpenter on hitting against the shift

http://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/24049347/mlb-hitters-explain-why-just-beat-shift

I witnessed the Dodgers pull a shift against Corey Dickerson last week and he owned them by dumping a soft single to left.

The Dodgers won 17-1.

Could The End be near for The Shift?

I'm told support is building for that idea. So what would happen if there were no more shifts?

More singles..Fewer LH hitters hitting .182..But would it be worth it?

I broke down numbers & surveyed coaches & execs!https://t.co/jmNfZOBz1C

— Jayson Stark (@jaysonst) December 5, 2018

he estimates that banning the shift would give each team an average of 17 more hits -- almost all singles -- over a season, eg, not much. it would help the slow, powerful pull hitters by giving them a few more singles vs. groundouts, but seems unlikely to change anyone's hitting approach, because singles simply aren't valuable enough to stop swinging for the fences.

https://cdn.theathletic.com/app/uploads/2018/12/04231514/Value-of-singles-by-year.png
https://cdn.theathletic.com/app/uploads/2018/12/04231511/Runs-in-innings-with-no-singles.png

“The reason the value of a single has gone down is that strikeouts are up,” said one big-league pitching coach. “So in this era, bunching hits is really hard to do. In our coaches’ room, we’ll sometimes ask, ‘How do you beat an ace? How do you beat a Max Scherzer?’ And it’s not by singles….You’re not going to bunch three singles in an inning against Max Scherzer. You’ve got to get a guy on and hit a ball in the seats. And that’s part of why singles are devalued. It’s just so hard to hit multiple singles in the same inning.”

stark thinks it might happen anyway, though, as only front-office quants really love the shift. everyone else wants more baserunners (and the pitchers seem to hate singles hit through an empty shortstop position more than they love outs taken away up the middle), even though it would prolong games

The logic of that pitching coach seems... deeply flawed.

Can't wait to see MLB's decree about what an infielder's "normal" positioning should be, and how far they're allowed to stray from it.

banning the shift reduces the penalty for pulling a grounder. pulled grounders go hand-in-hand with trying to hit for more power. banning the shift might *intensify* the launch-angle frenzy

— Jeff Sullivan (@based_ball) December 5, 2018

Long piece on the Jays' frequent use of a four-man outfield this year.

https://www.mlb.com/news/blue-jays-4-man-outfield-defense