Batters vs. The Shift

[revo]

With the defensive shift now a thing of the past, these are the players who may benefit the most from the ban. There were 33 players who faced a shift in 80% or more of their plate appearances in 2022, and the player with the most PAs vs. the shift was also the leader in 2021: the Bucs' new DH, Carlos Santana.

These are the players who faced the shift in over 80% of their PAs:
1 - Santana, 98.1%
2 - Cal Raleigh, 96.2%
3 - Jose Ramirez, 93.9%
4 - Rougned Odor, 93.8%
5 - Kole Calhoun, 93.4%
6 - Vinnie Pasquantino, 93.2%
7 - Corey Seager, 92.8%
8 - Aaron Hicks, 92.8%
9 - Kyle Tucker, 90.9%
10 - Cody Bellinger, 90.5%
11 - Kyle Schwarber, 90.5%
12 - Joey Gallo, 90.0%
13 - Max Kepler, 89.7%
14 - Max Muncy, 89.0%
15 - Seth Brown, 88.6%
16 - Shoehei Ohtani, 88.3%
17 - Yordan Alvarez, 88.1%
18 - Jorge Polanco, 86.3%
19 - Joey Votto, 86.2%
20 - Anthony santander, 85.3%
21 - Brandon Lowe, 85.3%
22 - Brandon Belt, 85.2%
23 - Ji-Man Choi, 83.9%
24 - Eddie Rosario, 83.6%
25 - Cavan Biggio, 82.8%
26 - Robbie Grossman, 82.6%
27 - Anthony Rizzo, 82.6%
28 - Keibert Ruiz, 82.3%
29 - Matt Olson, 81.3%
30 - Mike Yastrzemski, 81.2%
31 - Mike Moustakas, 81.0%
32 - Eugenio Suarez, 80.9%
33 - Adley Rutschman, 80.3%

Many of these batters were also among the leaders in 2021.

Conversely, there were 47 batters who saw shifts in less than 3% of their PAs, led by DJ LeMahieu, Whit Merrifield & Myles Straw, who didn't see ANY plate appearances with a defensive shift. Dj LeMahieu, in fact, has seen only ONE shift in the last five seasons. Some other prominent batters in this bottom 47 include: Bo Bichette, Jon Berti, Amed Rosario, Ke'Bryan Hayes, Tim Anderson, Trea Turner, William Contreras, Nico Hoerner, Ty France, Luis Arraez, Lourdes Gurriel, Brendan Rodgers & Alec Bohm.

Since MLB expects the overall league BA to rise 12 points due to the shift elimination, from .243 to .255, it stands to reason that the batters who didn't see the shift would see their stats remain relatively stable, but the ones who saw shifts nearly all of the time could see a big rise in their production.

[Moonlight J]

define big?
I wonder how much the law of unintended consequences is going to come into play here as well. Santana had several hits to the left side of the infield that he would lose in a standard alignment which offsets the potential gains to the right side.

[madducks]

Yeah, I'm still not buying Santana.

[madducks]

The odds of Jose Ramirez or Yordan Alvarez winning a triple crown have improved.

[Sour Masher]

Everyone has talked about Corey Seager being the poster boy for benefiting from the rule change...I didn't realize Jose Ramirez was shifted against even more. I am surprised he hasn't gotten more press. He was already a contender for top pick overall, and this seems to make the argument stronger.

[revo]

define big?
I wonder how much the law of unintended consequences is going to come into play here as well. Santana had several hits to the left side of the infield that he would lose in a standard alignment which offsets the potential gains to the right side.

Looking at that chart, Santana lost a good 20+ possibilities of a hit. If he gained 20 hits on the right side but lost 7 hits on the left side, then his BA would have jumped to .229 from .202. That seems pretty significant.

[revo]

Everyone has talked about Corey Seager being the poster boy for benefiting from the rule change...I didn't realize Jose Ramirez was shifted against even more. I am surprised he hasn't gotten more press. He was already a contender for top pick overall, and this seems to make the argument stronger.

I would guess the biggest beneficiaries would be Seager, Olson & Ramirez. And although I wouldn’t take him, I wouldn’t be shocked to see Santana with a 20+ pt BA hike over last year.

[Todd Zola]

<p>
The notion of &quot;would have been a hit&quot; bothers me. It&#39;s not as easy to translate as some are making it seem. In order to guage whether a batter ball would have been a hit, an assumption with respect to the defense played has to be made -- and teams can still position players in favorable spots (specifically up the middle). There is no legislation of the outfield.</p>
<p>
The pitcher may have changed his approach if there were no shift.</p>
<p>
The batter may have changed his approach.</p>
<p>
Sure, there are some players more likely to benefit. And yes, some of us have to quantify it. My spidey sense is the 2023 BABIP will be higher than recent seasons, but it won&#39;t be as high as some are anticipating.</p>
<p>
Something else to consider about &quot;those not affected by the shift.&quot; EVERYONE is influenced. Pitchers are not as effective from the stretch, and with more hits, they will be forced into the stretch more. Batters not shifted will be facing more pitchers from the stretch, helping their outcomes.</p>

[Kevin Seitzer]

Since MLB expects the overall league BA to rise 12 points due to the shift elimination, from .243 to .255

That seems like an almost impossibly high estimate.

Just doing some back of the envelope math, if 75% percent of at bats end with a ball in play, and 50% of those are ground balls or line drives within reach of infielders, and 35% of those involved shifts, and shifts cut 40 points of batting average from the hitter, and you assume that new legal alignments are able to recoup none of that gain, you end up with a 5 point rise in league batting average. And those are in some cases generous or very generous assumptions.

[revo]

That seems like an almost impossibly high estimate.

Just doing some back of the envelope math, if 75% percent of at bats end with a ball in play, and 50% of those are ground balls or line drives within reach of infielders, and 35% of those involved shifts, and shifts cut 40 points of batting average from the hitter, and you assume that new legal alignments are able to recoup none of that gain, you end up with a 5 point rise in league batting average. And those are in some cases generous or very generous assumptions.

Check out this Sports Illustrated article from Tom Verducci:

https://www.si.com/mlb/2022/11/21/banning-infield-shifts-impact

[Todd Zola]

Since MLB expects the overall league BA to rise 12 points due to the shift elimination, from .243 to .255.

MLB or Verducci? Looks to me like it is Verducci's mostly unexplained math making poor assumptions leading to the 12 point bump.
Everyone doing this assumes they know where the non-shifted defense would have been playing, what the pitcher would have thrown, and the approach of the batter. THEY DON'T!

[revo]

MLB or Verducci? Looks to me like it is Verducci's mostly unexplained math making poor assumptions leading to the 12 point bump. Everyone doing this assumes they know where the non-shifted defense would have been playing, what the pitcher would have thrown, and the approach of the batter. THEY DON'T!

The 2012 season was the last one with less than 4% total defensive shifts and the leaguewide batting average was .255.

There have been many studies done. Bill James did a study in 2021 and found 4,802 hits were taken away and 3,946 hits were added that season because of defensive shifts. That would've boosted the leaguewide BA by 6 points that season. He found Jeimer Candelario lost 20 hits to the shift that season, Muncy 16, Gallo & Alvarez 15 each. Candelario's BA would've been boosted 36 points (.271 to .307), Muncy 32 pts (.249 to .281), Gallo 30 pts (.199 to .229) and Yordan 28 (.277 to .305).

Sports Info Solutions did a study that found the batters who pulled the ball the most batted .219 on groundballs into the shift but .247 in the pre-shift era.

Baseball Prospectus did a similar study and found the shift took 35 points off the batting average of lefties.

BABIP in 2010 was .301. BABIP in 2022 was .291. BABIP started its precipitous decline, not coincidentally, when defensive shifts started to exceed 30% vs. LHPs, right around 2017. Groundball BABIP went from .242 in 2017 to .225 last season.

All this data is not a coincidence.

In a recent LA Times article, they quote an unnamed NL exec as saying the Carlos Santana signing was done because Pittsburgh is an example of a team forecasting a big positive effect on hitters:
“That might one of the best signings, value-wise, of the offseason,” the executive said.

I'll go with the studies and the data.

[Todd Zola]

2012 league strikeout rate was 19.8%. It was 22.4% last season, which affects batting average.
While they're won't be shifting as it is defined, there will be more unconventional defenses played within the rules, so a hit in 2012 still may not be a hit in 2023.

[Kevin Seitzer]

The 2012 season was the last one with less than 4% total defensive shifts and the leaguewide batting average was .255.

There have been many studies done. Bill James did a study in 2021 and found 4,802 hits were taken away and 3,946 hits were added that season because of defensive shifts. That would've boosted the leaguewide BA by 6 points that season. He found Jeimer Candelario lost 20 hits to the shift that season, Muncy 16, Gallo & Alvarez 15 each. Candelario's BA would've been boosted 36 points (.271 to .307), Muncy 32 pts (.249 to .281), Gallo 30 pts (.199 to .229) and Yordan 28 (.277 to .305).

Sports Info Solutions did a study that found the batters who pulled the ball the most batted .219 on groundballs into the shift but .247 in the pre-shift era.

Baseball Prospectus did a similar study and found the shift took 35 points off the batting average of lefties.

BABIP in 2010 was .301. BABIP in 2022 was .291. BABIP started its precipitous decline, not coincidentally, when defensive shifts started to exceed 30% vs. LHPs, right around 2017. Groundball BABIP went from .242 in 2017 to .225 last season.

All this data is not a coincidence.

No, it's not a coincidence, but I think you and Tom Verducci are misinterpreting it. Verducci may have missed the bolded part from the Bill James study you quoted?

When you mention that BABIP was 10 points higher in 2010, first of all, that ought to give you pause, because Verducci is claiming the shift will raise averages by 12 points, and a 10-point increase in BABIP would only raise averages by a little less than 8 points. But secondly and more importantly, there are a lot of other things that have changed since 2010 that have served to drive batting averages down--for instance, average fastball velo has increased, the fraction of secondary pitches thrown has increased, and the amount of innings thrown by relievers has increased. These things have served to drive up strikeouts, yes, but they have also served to drive down BABIP.

I think the Bill James conclusion that shifts reduced leaguewide BA by 6 points is on the high side, but at least it's plausible. Verducci's result is not.

You also have to remember that the Bill James baseline to which he was comparing was "no shifts", not "two infielders on each side of the bag". People are going to find that the effect on positioning from the new rule is a lot closer to the 2022 reality than it is to the old traditional infield alignment, which is what Todd is saying.

[revo]

What Verducci was specifically looking at was the effect of the shift on hard-hit groundballs. He also concludes that, in order to beat the shifts, batters were purposely trying to loft the ball more over the defensive infield alignments, so he believes that batters will correct and hit more groundballs again. Seems plausible.
The MLB-wide BA answer is likely closer to Bill James estimate than Verducci's. But there are players who will majorly benefit, and they could see increases not unlike the four players I listed before.