The Janish Shift

Paul Janish was recently added to the Orioles' active roster. Photo courtesy of Les Treagus/Norfolk Tides

In their recent series against the Norfolk Tides, the Columbus Clippers employed an extreme outfield shift against the Tides' #9 hitter, shortstop Paul Janish. Against Janish, the Clippers consistently positioned their right fielder further off the right-field line than I had seen any team position its right fielder against any hitter. The two photos below - because I took them myself, they look pretty amateurish - show where the location of the right fielder. He played between the "S" and the "t' in the State Farm advertisement in the first photo:

This isn't Columbus defending Paul Janish - it's the Tides warming up between innings.  

This picture tries to show that advertisement in relation to the entire field. It's that red-and-white blotch under the scoreboard. As you can see, that's quite a distance from the right-field line.

This picture of Harbor Park shows exactly how far off the right-field line Columbus played Paul Janish. 

While more and more teams are shifting their defenses against more and more batters, it seems to me that most of the shifting is done by infielders, with the outfield remaining pretty much straight away. And the stereotype of the extreme pull hitter is the hulking home-run hitter, which Paul Janish is not. It seemed strange to me and my co-workers in the press box that it would be Paul Janish against whom we saw the most extreme outfield shift.

Also, right fielders in Harbor Park generally play further off the right-field line than they do in other parks. There is a party deck in right field that shortens the distance down the foul line to 315 feet, and the fences quickly curve away from the deck to 375 feet in straight right-center. Right fielders can travel further to chase a ball hit down the line because the ball will not roll that far away from the infield. The downside is that such a positioning opens up the right field line for the batter.

Was Columbus on to something? Does it make sense for the right fielder to play that far off the line? In the games I have scored to date, both as the MLB Advanced Media Datacaster and for Baseball Info Solutions, Paul Janish had 127 plate appearances. The table below shows the first fielder for the balls Janish puts into play. The "Outs" column shows the number of balls put into play that result in outs; the "Hits" column the number of balls put into play that result in hits.

Position	Outs	Hits	Total	Percentage
Pitcher	1	0	1	.010
Catcher	2	0	2	.019
First Base	3	0	3	.029
Second Base	7	0	7	.068
Third Base	17	1	18	.175
Shortstop	15	2	17	.165
Left Field	13	10	23	.223
Center Field	13	7	20	.194
Right Field	6	6	12	.117
Totals	77	26	103
Walks:	9
Strikeouts:	15

My initial thought is that when Janish does put the ball in play, he does pull the ball. He hits more balls to the left fielder than to the right fielder, second baseman, and first baseman combined. 21.4% of the balls he puts into play were fielded by the first baseman, second baseman, or right fielder, the positions that would field the ball if Janish were going the other way.

While I'm sure that the information exists somewhere, I don't know whether Janish's distribution of balls put in play is typical of all players or whether he is an extreme pull hitter. If Janish is an extreme pull hitter, then kudos to the Cleveland Indians professional scouting department. Cleveland, the parent club of the Clippers, took the time to scout the International League and were observant enough to notice that Janish rarely hit to right field. And kudos to their AAA managerial staff, led by manager Chris Tremie, which had the courage to position their fielder in an unconventional way.

But also, if Janish is unusual in hitting the ball so infrequently to the opposite field, then there's something wrong with him. Janish hasn't been a successful offensive player; his career major-league OPS is .574 (in 434 games) and his AAA OPS is .650 (in 458 games). I think that it's likely that Janish would be a better offensive player if he "hit 'em where they ain't" more frequently. And Janish is a smart guy; he graduated from Rice University with a degree in economics. It's baffling that he hasn't realized that he would be more successful going the opposite way. If I were Janish, I'd spend an offseason working on hitting the ball the opposite way. It can't hurt his career.