Baseball’s Shifting Defenses
June 26, 2019 at 1:14 a.m.
Baseball’s Shifting Defenses
By Roger Grossman-
The biggest step Major League Baseball needs to take to “pace-of-play” that is to eliminate the designated hitter and let pitchers bat for themselves.
As the use of computers has taken over baseball strategy, more managers have complex and very detailed information on opposing hitters’ trends and tendencies. They know what percentage of pitches they put in play, what percentage of those are hit in the air and what percentage are hit on the ground, and more.
With that hyper-sensitive data at their fingertips, managers are positing their defensive players in very creative ways to keep hitters from reaching base.
It’s called baseball shifting, and it’s driving some people crazy.
A baseball shift means, for example, the shortstop moving to short right field (between the first and second basemen) with a left-handed batter up. Or, with a righty up, the second baseman moves a step or two on the left side of second base.
Why?
Because the way the game is played today, hitting the ball to the opposite field is almost an accident. A left-handed hitter slapping a ball through the hole between the shortstop and third baseman is a rare sight—and every manager has a computer program that proves it.
As a result, defenses are shifting almost half of the plate appearances in any game, and guys are hitting ground balls to fielders who are 50 feet into right field. If they were any farther out into right field, they could track down a high fly ball to the warning track.
And it works, by the way! A guy like the Chicago Cubs’ Anthony Rizzo hits to the shortstop in short-right field about three times every two days (that’s what it feels like—not actual data).
And so, we have people on earth who claim that shifting players is unfair and should be banned by rule.
How very 2019 of them?
These self-proclaimed “guardians of the game” pontificate that defenses are stifling offenses by shifting players to one side or the other. They say there is no room for this sort of unorthodox behavior in a game with such history and tradition.
Imagine someone who is successful at what they do and getting rich doing it being opposed by other people simply because they are successful and rich? Oh, sorry, I should leave those subjects to Gary Gerard’s column on Saturday mornings, shouldn’t I?
Teams have been creatively playing defense in certain situations for years and no one has said a word.
Example: Team A has the tying or winning run at third base with less than two outs in the late innings. What’s the defense’s response? They bring the infield in to the edge of the grass to try to keep the runner from scoring. They might also bring in an outfielder to play as a fifth infielder to try to keep a runner from scoring in that same scenario.
Those ploys weren’t a problem before, but moving the shortstop into short-right field is not ok? Why?
The real issue here is that batters have computers too, and theirs tell them that if they swing a certain way (called swing plane) and hit the ball at a certain angle (called launch angle), they can hit the ball harder and farther.
I had teammates who followed this same philosophy when I was a center fielder for the Argos Little League All-Star team from 1978-1980. We called it “swinging for the fences.” Guys who employed it either hit a home run or struck out. In 2019, strikeout and homerun totals are up—way up.
I don’t need a computer to explain it.
So, the solution is not forcing defenses to play certain players only in certain places. The answer, in fact, lies with the batter.
When Team B shifts their short stop to short-right field, there is only one fielder on the left side of the infield. There is a 50-percent better chance of a batter rolling a ground ball through a half-vacated infield than trying to cram a ball into a space occupied by three infielders and an outfielder.
An even more novel concept: bunt.
Even the heaviest of sluggers could beat out a mediocrally-placed bunt when the defense is shifting against him.
If batters would do that successfully a few times, this shifting would stop.
But the launch angle of a bunt can’t be measured, so we languish under the truth that “you always get what you also got when you always do what you always did.”
I say, “shift away, you shortstops and second basemen!”
Batters: adjust accordingly, and let us fans bathe in the strategy of it.
The biggest step Major League Baseball needs to take to “pace-of-play” that is to eliminate the designated hitter and let pitchers bat for themselves.
As the use of computers has taken over baseball strategy, more managers have complex and very detailed information on opposing hitters’ trends and tendencies. They know what percentage of pitches they put in play, what percentage of those are hit in the air and what percentage are hit on the ground, and more.
With that hyper-sensitive data at their fingertips, managers are positing their defensive players in very creative ways to keep hitters from reaching base.
It’s called baseball shifting, and it’s driving some people crazy.
A baseball shift means, for example, the shortstop moving to short right field (between the first and second basemen) with a left-handed batter up. Or, with a righty up, the second baseman moves a step or two on the left side of second base.
Why?
Because the way the game is played today, hitting the ball to the opposite field is almost an accident. A left-handed hitter slapping a ball through the hole between the shortstop and third baseman is a rare sight—and every manager has a computer program that proves it.
As a result, defenses are shifting almost half of the plate appearances in any game, and guys are hitting ground balls to fielders who are 50 feet into right field. If they were any farther out into right field, they could track down a high fly ball to the warning track.
And it works, by the way! A guy like the Chicago Cubs’ Anthony Rizzo hits to the shortstop in short-right field about three times every two days (that’s what it feels like—not actual data).
And so, we have people on earth who claim that shifting players is unfair and should be banned by rule.
How very 2019 of them?
These self-proclaimed “guardians of the game” pontificate that defenses are stifling offenses by shifting players to one side or the other. They say there is no room for this sort of unorthodox behavior in a game with such history and tradition.
Imagine someone who is successful at what they do and getting rich doing it being opposed by other people simply because they are successful and rich? Oh, sorry, I should leave those subjects to Gary Gerard’s column on Saturday mornings, shouldn’t I?
Teams have been creatively playing defense in certain situations for years and no one has said a word.
Example: Team A has the tying or winning run at third base with less than two outs in the late innings. What’s the defense’s response? They bring the infield in to the edge of the grass to try to keep the runner from scoring. They might also bring in an outfielder to play as a fifth infielder to try to keep a runner from scoring in that same scenario.
Those ploys weren’t a problem before, but moving the shortstop into short-right field is not ok? Why?
The real issue here is that batters have computers too, and theirs tell them that if they swing a certain way (called swing plane) and hit the ball at a certain angle (called launch angle), they can hit the ball harder and farther.
I had teammates who followed this same philosophy when I was a center fielder for the Argos Little League All-Star team from 1978-1980. We called it “swinging for the fences.” Guys who employed it either hit a home run or struck out. In 2019, strikeout and homerun totals are up—way up.
I don’t need a computer to explain it.
So, the solution is not forcing defenses to play certain players only in certain places. The answer, in fact, lies with the batter.
When Team B shifts their short stop to short-right field, there is only one fielder on the left side of the infield. There is a 50-percent better chance of a batter rolling a ground ball through a half-vacated infield than trying to cram a ball into a space occupied by three infielders and an outfielder.
An even more novel concept: bunt.
Even the heaviest of sluggers could beat out a mediocrally-placed bunt when the defense is shifting against him.
If batters would do that successfully a few times, this shifting would stop.
But the launch angle of a bunt can’t be measured, so we languish under the truth that “you always get what you also got when you always do what you always did.”
I say, “shift away, you shortstops and second basemen!”
Batters: adjust accordingly, and let us fans bathe in the strategy of it.
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