Shifty Business

This is so cool.  Have I died and gone to heaven?

Since I began my career over 25 years ago, first with Project Scoresheet, then with STATS, Inc., now with Baseball Info Solutions, my main focus in the analytics world has been defense.  At Project Scoresheet we came up with a variety of techniques that we presented at the SABR conference in the 80’s.  In the 90’s at STATS, we developed Zone Ratings and the original version of Ultimate Zone Ratings.  In the 2000’s, here at Baseball Info Solutions we developed the Plus/Minus System and Defensive Runs Saved.

Recently our focus has been on evaluating The Shift.  And for the first time ever, we’re seeing major league teams immediately adopt a major strategy that is in line with the new analytics.

This is so cool.

In each of the last two years, there have been about 1,900 shifts in MLB.  This year we’re on pace for twice that, about 3,800.   Here are the top ten teams.  You can see that they have really upped the ante on the new Shift Defense.

Top 10 Most Shifting Teams in 2012

Most of these teams are doubling and tripling the number of shifts they’ve done in the past, a couple even more.

But there are still some teams that don’t believe in it yet.  Here are the five
teams with the fewest shifts this year.  They have not adopted the Shift Defense.

Top 5 Least Shifting Teams in 2012

In their defense, I will say that the research is not yet 100% conclusive that The Shift is effective.  In our book, The Fielding Bible—Volume III, we showed that about 50 points are knocked off the batting average on grounders and short liners for the most commonly shifted hitters in the last two years.  It’s a good sample size, but it’s not a conclusive sample size.  Baseball Info Solutions is continuing to track this and provide research updates to team clients.

But having said that, I believe the teams that are ramping this up are doing the right thing.  In The Fielding Bible—Volume II, that came out three years ago, we were suggesting more shifts to more hitters.  In our newest book we provide more evidence.  I expect that as we continue to dig deeper, we will continue to uncover more evidence in favor of the Shift Defense.

I’m calling it the Shift Defense.  I’m thinking of this as a new defensive strategy, like the Zone Defense in basketball, the 3-4 Defense in football, etc.   Defense in baseball has gone unnoticed for a long time.  It’s time a new defense in baseball got its own name like new defenses in other sports.  I expect that there will come a time in baseball where shifting by batter and even by count and pitch type will become as commonplace as NFL defensive changes based on the down and distance situation.  The Tampa Bay Rays are getting close to that now, and as they continue to succeed, other teams will begin to emulate their success, as they have begun doing now.