Shifts Happen

Two weeks of baseball are now in the books. Early-season standings continue to be unpredictable, but one thing that's not is the league's increasing use of shifts. Teams are currently on pace to shift a record number of times for the sixth consecutive season. Note that all shift totals referenced in this article are shifts on balls in play.

*Prorated from 2,542 shifts thus far

With a combined 2,542 shifts this season, teams have already surpassed the total from 2011, demonstrating the drastic overhaul the league has undertaken in just six short years. Over a 162-game season, teams are on pace to total 31,677 shifts, which would represent a 13 percent increase over last season's number. This pales in comparison to the increase between 2015 and 2016—58 percent—and is actually the smallest percent increase since league-wide shifts began their record-breaking trend between 2011 and 2012. Even though shifts are still increasing, the rate at which they're doing so is slowing down as teams approach optimal shift usage.

That being said, there is still a marked increase among the majority of the teams.

After just nine teams shifted over 1,000 times last season, 15 are on pace to do so in 2017, while the Rays may become the first team to shift over 2,000 times in a season. Meanwhile, the Marlins have suddenly entered the fray as a top-shifting team after being among the bottom five each of the past three seasons. Like the Marlins, the White Sox have upped the ante on shifting and have saved the most runs in baseball thus far (5) due to the shift. The Rockies are at the other end of the spectrum, on pace to finish with the fifth-fewest shifts this season after the eighth-most in 2016 and the third-most in 2015.

Of course, it's still too soon in the season to draw definitive conclusions about this year's shift trends. However, it’s pretty clear the shift isn't going away anytime soon.