More and more sports leagues are trying to increase "offense" and "scoring" in order to lock in casual viewers into fans. There is almost a video game expectation that sports leaders want to market toward the public whom are immersed in their Fortnite and other battle royale games.
MLB has been whining about its game for a long time. First it was too much pitching. "Women love the long ball" campaign helped fuel the specter of the steroid era and juiced baseballs. Second, it was pace of play. Games were getting too long, people could not pay attention. Third, it was "engaging" the fans during games by pushing MLB stat and fantasy apps on their phones (ironically, causing fans in the stands to pay less attention to the actual game.)
The current bane of the MLB is the over-gospel use of advanced stats to "improve" the game. The current foil is the defensive shift. The shift is ruining the game, so they say. It is taking away hitting, run scoring - - - offense.
There is nothing against the rules about where you can place fielders on any given play, except for the pitcher, who has be in contact with the rubber 60 feet 6 inches away from the plate, and the catcher who has to sit in the catcher's box behind the plate. Otherwise, a team could place the seven other fielders in the infield - - - as close to the plate as possible (in bunting situations).
Advanced statistics provide data that shows tendencies of hitters. But even general experience will tell you that certain hitters are "pull" hitters and others "slap" or opposite field hitters. Pitchers have been taught to pitch against those tendencies. But adding another fielder, usually in the short outfield, takes away base hits, or so is the theory.
Yahoo Sports notes that the overall analysis of the shift is unclear.
The usage of shifts has gone from a rarity to begin the decade, to almost routine in 2018.
In 2010, Fangraph’s data on the frequency of defensive shifting shows
that the Tampa Bay Rays under manager Joe Maddon employed the shift
against a league-leading 261 batters.
In 2018, Maddon’s Cubs actually
employed the lowest number of shifts to opposing batters with 631. But
that low number is still nearly 150 percent higher than the league high
just eight years ago.
In fact, only five teams, the Cubs, Angels, Padres, Rangers and
Cardinals, shifted for less than 1,000 batters in 2018. The Chicago
White Sox set the pace, shifting for 2,150 batters. Overall, teams
shifted 17 percent of the time during the past regular season, which is
nearly one in every five batters.
It has undeniably become a big part of the strategy across MLB. But
has it really impacted the game in a negative way?
The success rate varies, and like all aspects of baseball relies on a degree of luck. Fangraphics digested the types of shifts being used, and the accompanying
success rates. The five teams that shifted most frequently (infield and
outfield) in 2018 did so an average of 11.9 times per game, with
opposing batters averaging 3.3 hits against per games. That’s a .277
batting average. The five teams that shifted the least averaged five
shifts per games. Opposing batters averaged 1.5 hits, or a .300 average.
Does that mean shifting more is better? Does that tell us that
shifting is even having a notable impact? Not necessarily is the correct
answer to both, yet there’s a crowd that’s convinced it’s unfairly
dragging down offense in MLB.
There are some variables those numbers don’t account for. It doesn’t
tell us the number of times a shifted defender saved a hit, or how often
a hit went through his vacated position. But the overriding numbers
tell the real story. Shifting does more to get people talking than it
does to drain offense from the game.
The best way to counter a shift is to hit the ball where they are not. To stop the shift, a batter needs to be able to place the ball in the vacated area. And that usually means bunting the ball for a base hit. But that is viewed as a cowardly or unmanly way to get a hit. But it is not. It is part of the game. But players and agents focus more on the glamor stats: like HRs and RBIs than whether you got a measly bunt single.
It would be nice to hear the view of the late Tony Gywnn on the shift controversy. He probably would have told you that a batter has to make the adjustments. If you looked at his hitting chart, you could see that he sprayed the ball to all parts of the ball park. He was not a pure pull hitter, or an opposite field slap hitter. Just as others were taught to hit the ball "up the middle" to get solid contact, Gwynn was a pure hitter capable of adjusting his swing to the pitch, circumstance and the elements. But that type of hitting dedication is rare. It would seem scapegoating the shift instead of telling players to adjust is the easy way out to jump start some more offense.
There are old schoolers who just go by the mantra "hit em where they ain't." Some hitting coaches are now focused in on "launch angles" and contact velocity as the statistical means to get past the shift, because harder ground balls get through the shift faster, and no one can catch a HR ball except a fan in the stands.
Baseball should do nothing to affect the strategy evolutions in the game. Let the shift ride out its fad until the next great Big Data thing happens.
