Beating the shift

TL1961

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Interesting justification by the hitters for being too stubborn to "accept" a single by hitting to a vacated SS position: Carpenter makes the point that it isn't easy to just hit the ball to SS, because of the tough 95 MPH stuff everyone throws. He then follows that up by saying if he tried he might be 2 for 4, but he also could get a HR and a double instead.

So, the pitcher was too tough to simply get singles at will, but against that same pitcher he homers and doubles. OK, makes sense!

The hitters also justify their stubbornness by saying "Well, if I get a single instead of driving the ball, that is what they want me to do." Implying that it has no value to get on first. But this same hitter will not swing at a 3-0 pitch, which implies the opposite.

At the same time OBP is being valued highly, hitters justify going for the extra base hit instead.
 

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I believe Scott Boras started this discussion a week ago. Here was his explanation for why he thinks the shift is discriminatory...

Boras’ bigger issue is the toll it’s taking on left handed hitters. Many baseball followers have suggested these players learn to hit against the shift – to left field – but Boras said there’s no training to do this at the developmental level, even throughout the minor leagues.

“We don’t want a situation where a single group of players are being singled out,” he said.

“Right handed hitters do not have to amend their swing,” he added.

Right handed hitters aren’t affected nearly as much, since a first baseman has to be left on the right side against them and also, Boras hypothesizes, because it’s easier for right handed hitters to go the other way because breaking balls from right handed pitchers (who comprise the vast majority of pitchers) run away from right handed hitters and in to left handed batters. Per Boras' logic, that shift in perception of the incoming baseball leads to balls being hit to the right side for all hitters.

“You’re trained in the minor leagues to do one consistent approach,” Boras said. “It’s a major adjustment. ... There’s a psychological component to this. A lot of this has to do with psychology. When a hitter comes up to the plate and sees four guys on the right side of the infield, I think it’s a bit intimidating.”

I found the bolded particularly interesting.
 
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anotheridiot

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I think the best thing I ever heard on the subject was when Tony Gwynn and players like Sandberg and Dawson have said that teams would not shift against them because they would make adjustments.

It is definitely a pride thing with these players, and eventually, you would think the constant grounding out to the short right fielder would be enough to make a player want to change.
 

fatbeard

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In this article, pussy MLB hitters whine about how hard it is to hit the ball against the shift. maybe they should get a safe room with all the snowflake pitchers that can barely get to 5 innings on a 6 man rotation

These whiners should spend a couple of seasons with Leo Durocher


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

In this post, a disgruntled pussy whines about the abilities of professional athletes who are infinitely his physical superior, and why they can't do things that he claims are easy in spite of the fact that he couldn't even begin to dream about doing them himself and thus has absolutely no relevant expertise or frame of reference for his idiotic comments.
 

CubsFaninMN

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In terms of "the shift" (which is taken to mean putting all of your infield players on the right side of the infield against left-handed batters, but indeed I've seen a number of shifts lately that are exactly the reverse, putting all but the 1B guy on the left side, against righty pull hitters), I'm really of two minds.

First off, there are precedents in other sports of enforcing particular boundaries for players' physical positioning. Football requires very strict positioning rules be observed; hockey and soccer don't allow goalies outside of a given area or other players inside a given area to "help out" the goalies... for instance, how much fun would a soccer game be, if one team just lined up half of their players in front of their own goal and challenged the other team to get it past all of them? Or if you could line up anyone on a football team anywhere on the field you wanted, line of scrimmage be damned? You start to lose the elements that make the game predictable and repeatable, elements you need to plan -- and recognize as a fan -- *any* kind of strategy.

Do the MLB rules give any indication that "the game" expects people to play in specific physical locations? Well, yes, they do. A lot. Consider:

- A batter must remain within the chalked-in batter's box at all times during the actual pitching of the ball. A batter can't start out from outside the box, or the results of the pitch can be tossed out by the umpire. I believe, in some cases, the batter can be called out.

- An on-deck batter must remain in the on-deck circle. We famously saw someone thrown out of a game last year for refusing to follow this positioning rule, what's more making fun of it by literally picking up and moving the batter's box mat over to where he wanted to stand.

- A runner must stay within the designated basepaths while approaching a base. This positioning rule is not consistently enforced, but has become a deciding factor in a number of ballgames. In fact, several runners have been called out approaching first base because they swerved outside of the marked basepath and got in the way of a throw to the guy covering first. Even though the base itself is not located within the basepath and a runner is required to swerve out of the basepath of get to the base. So, yeah -- positioning on the basepaths is important.

- A pitcher's foot must remain in contact with the rubber until he begins his delivery to home plate. Any tiny movement of the foot off the rubber, followed by the completion of the delivery, is ruled a balk. Otherwise, a pitcher could start with a run-up to the mound starting around second base, and as long as his foot struck the rubber at some point during the run-up, he could delivery the ball up to "three courtesy steps" past the rubber, sort of like the travelling foul commonly uncalled in basketball. Some guys could achieve 140-MPH fastballs, delivered from 40 feet away from the plate, using this approach. But do we see it? Nope -- 'cause it violates baseball's pitcher positioning/movement rules. And, of course, because offense would dry up to nearly nothing if such an approach was allowed...

- The league office has determined that people playing on specific parts of the field can only sport gloves of specific types. This is the best indication that the rules of baseball do not anticipate players shifting between defensive positions during a game, BTW -- if any defender on the field can be allowed to occupy and physical location on the field during a play, you wouldn't have this ridiculous farce of guys having to swap out gloves for a sequence of a few pitches.

So, yeah -- baseball has a lot of rules as to the allowable positioning of players during pretty much any given play. And it has rules that express an implicit understanding of where defensive players are supposed to play. But it doesn't have specific rules stating that players may not occupy different positions, based on the game situation.

How would you make such a rule? State that the SS and 3B guys must remain on the left side of the infield, 1B and 2B on the right, and if either set is on the wrong side of second base when the pitch is thrown, it's either a ball, or a balk? Fine, you could do that, and it would remove "the shift" from the game. But it would also remove your standard bunt-crash defensive setups.

Do we really want to stop teams from crashing in on bunts? No? Then we need a set of rules that are different for bunt-crash defenses as opposed to regular defenses. Yeah, it can be done, but now you're getting to need to add extra line judges to the umpire teams, just to keep an eye on where everyone's feet are located when the pitcher releases the ball.

Would such rules make a lot of difference to how the game is playing out these days? Not much -- it would increase hitting averages and run production, but it would also increase the length of games. (Think about that a moment -- the league wants short, high-scoring games, and these are two sets which do not intersect, LOL...) While the league loves offense, I dunno if you'll see rule changes that would, be definition, make the offenses bat longer and, thus, increase game length.

So, while "the shift" does primarily seem to discriminate against left-handed hitters, outlawing it doesn't change the team game, really. It only changes the individual players' games and stats. As fans, we're more interested in our teams' production, but of course Boras primarily sees baseball as individual performers, his view on it is "who gives a flying fuck which team is the current employer of said individual performers?" It's actually in Boras' great favor to view baseball as one huge pool of players, all playing against each other for individual stat rankings, no bothersome things like teams involved So, of course he wants to see the shift outlawed. It reduces the individual stats of his lefty clients, thus reducing their free agent value, thus reducing the amount his percentage adds up to.

This is really all about Scott Boras being a greedy motherfucking son of a bitch who views the game in a way the game should *never* be viewed, really. Nothing else... ;)
 

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anotheridiot

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In terms of "the shift" (which is taken to mean putting all of your infield players on the right side of the infield against left-handed batters, but indeed I've seen a number of shifts lately that are exactly the reverse, putting all but the 1B guy on the left side, against righty pull hitters), I'm really of two minds.

First off, there are precedents in other sports of enforcing particular boundaries for players' physical positioning. Football requires very strict positioning rules be observed; hockey and soccer don't allow goalies outside of a given area or other players inside a given area to "help out" the goalies... for instance, how much fun would a soccer game be, if one team just lined up half of their players in front of their own goal and challenged the other team to get it past all of them? Or if you could line up anyone on a football team anywhere on the field you wanted, line of scrimmage be damned? You start to lose the elements that make the game predictable and repeatable, elements you need to plan -- and recognize as a fan -- *any* kind of strategy.

Do the MLB rules give any indication that "the game" expects people to play in specific physical locations? Well, yes, they do. A lot. Consider:

- A batter must remain within the chalked-in batter's box at all times during the actual pitching of the ball. A batter can't start out from outside the box, or the results of the pitch can be tossed out by the umpire. I believe, in some cases, the batter can be called out.

- An on-deck batter must remain in the on-deck circle. We famously saw someone thrown out of a game last year for refusing to follow this positioning rule, what's more making fun of it by literally picking up and moving the batter's box mat over to where he wanted to stand.

- A runner must stay within the designated basepaths while approaching a base. This positioning rule is not consistently enforced, but has become a deciding factor in a number of ballgames. In fact, several runners have been called out approaching first base because they swerved outside of the marked basepath and got in the way of a throw to the guy covering first. Even though the base itself is not located within the basepath and a runner is required to swerve out of the basepath of get to the base. So, yeah -- positioning on the basepaths is important.

- A pitcher's foot must remain in contact with the rubber until he begins his delivery to home plate. Any tiny movement of the foot off the rubber, followed by the completion of the delivery, is ruled a balk. Otherwise, a pitcher could start with a run-up to the mound starting around second base, and as long as his foot struck the rubber at some point during the run-up, he could delivery the ball up to "three courtesy steps" past the rubber, sort of like the travelling foul commonly uncalled in basketball. Some guys could achieve 140-MPH fastballs, delivered from 40 feet away from the plate, using this approach. But do we see it? Nope -- 'cause it violates baseball's pitcher positioning/movement rules. And, of course, because offense would dry up to nearly nothing if such an approach was allowed...

- The league office has determined that people playing on specific parts of the field can only sport gloves of specific types. This is the best indication that the rules of baseball do not anticipate players shifting between defensive positions during a game, BTW -- if any defender on the field can be allowed to occupy and physical location on the field during a play, you wouldn't have this ridiculous farce of guys having to swap out gloves for a sequence of a few pitches.

So, yeah -- baseball has a lot of rules as to the allowable positioning of players during pretty much any given play. And it has rules that express an implicit understanding of where defensive players are supposed to play. But it doesn't have specific rules stating that players may not occupy different positions, based on the game situation.

How would you make such a rule? State that the SS and 3B guys must remain on the left side of the infield, 1B and 2B on the right, and if either set is on the wrong side of second base when the pitch is thrown, it's either a ball, or a balk? Fine, you could do that, and it would remove "the shift" from the game. But it would also remove your standard bunt-crash defensive setups.

Do we really want to stop teams from crashing in on bunts? No? Then we need a set of rules that are different for bunt-crash defenses as opposed to regular defenses. Yeah, it can be done, but now you're getting to need to add extra line judges to the umpire teams, just to keep an eye on where everyone's feet are located when the pitcher releases the ball.

Would such rules make a lot of difference to how the game is playing out these days? Not much -- it would increase hitting averages and run production, but it would also increase the length of games. (Think about that a moment -- the league wants short, high-scoring games, and these are two sets which do not intersect, LOL...) While the league loves offense, I dunno if you'll see rule changes that would, be definition, make the offenses bat longer and, thus, increase game length.

So, while "the shift" does primarily seem to discriminate against left-handed hitters, outlawing it doesn't change the team game, really. It only changes the individual players' games and stats. As fans, we're more interested in our teams' production, but of course Boras primarily sees baseball as individual performers, his view on it is "who gives a flying fuck which team is the current employer of said individual performers?" It's actually in Boras' great favor to view baseball as one huge pool of players, all playing against each other for individual stat rankings, no bothersome things like teams involved So, of course he wants to see the shift outlawed. It reduces the individual stats of his lefty clients, thus reducing their free agent value, thus reducing the amount his percentage adds up to.

This is really all about Scott Boras being a greedy motherfucking son of a bitch who views the game in a way the game should *never* be viewed, really. Nothing else... ;)

Well, if Rizzo strays too far from first base they make him wear a different glove.
 

CubsFaninMN

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Well, if Rizzo strays too far from first base they make him wear a different glove.

Yep, because the only thing in the current rules that defines any difference between the designated first baseman, and the guy playing closest to first in a given defensive alignment, is that the latter is the one who must wear a first baseman's glove, the former may not, in that alignment. It says nothing about flipping people all around the diamond, if you like.

I will add, in re the league desire for faster and higher-scoring games -- two sets which do not intersect -- what the league really wants is for every game to be 6-2, with a total of eight hits and eight solo home runs. That last two hours each. And all I'm saying is, that may be what the league office wets its pants over, but to me, that wouldn't be baseball.
 

JP Hochbaum

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Baseball is essentially a 1 on 1 game, with the fielders just serving as protection for a pitcher if a hitter makes contact. This is why hitters and pitchers have strict rules. I wouldn't want to see strict rules for where players should be positioned, that removes a lot of strategy that adds more wrinkles to a very complex game.
 

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Which leads us back to the pussy hitters. If they bunted or hit the ball to the opposite field the majority of shifts would go away.

Babe Ruth often dedicated entire batting practices to hitting the ball to opposite field. If he can do that then an inferior player like Schwarber should be able to do the same thing
 

CSF77

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Is this a Schwarber driven thread?
 

CSF77

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All I can say is play to their ability. If they got wheels then lay it down. If they are station to station. Depends honestly. 2 outs might as well go for broke. Less than 2 make a inning happen.

Game has shifted away from situational and gone HR happy.
 

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Is this a Schwarber driven thread?

For the Cubs, more Rizzo-Schwarber. Those are the two guys most impacted by the shift. But I've seen teams put shifts to the left on when people like Baez and Bryant are up, too. It's far more prevalent against lefties, but not limited to them.

That said, I've seen both Rizzo and Schwarber beat the shift more than once this year by simply laying a bunt down along the third base line... :)

Edit: speaking of which... :D
 

CSF77

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I don’t mind a bunt. But with 2 outs and none on the odds are low scoring regardless so going beefcake is the right call.

If it is leading off an inning and they are giving 1st then take it.

If they play more situationally then the other manager stops being cookie cutter
 

anotheridiot

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For the Cubs, more Rizzo-Schwarber. Those are the two guys most impacted by the shift. But I've seen teams put shifts to the left on when people like Baez and Bryant are up, too. It's far more prevalent against lefties, but not limited to them.

That said, I've seen both Rizzo and Schwarber beat the shift more than once this year by simply laying a bunt down along the third base line... :)

Edit: speaking of which... :D

Its more prevalent because nobody is going to throw out the guy at first if you are playing short left field. Short right is a different story. Hell, Dawson used to throw to first base from Right field.

Its not beating the shift with a bunt, its lacing the ball to left field and forcing the team to put their third baseman back at third base, hence opening up the hole in right field again. Its not going to happen with a bunt or two, its going to happen with 25 singles to left field.
 

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