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.

The Norfolk Performances of New Oriole Cord Phelps

The Orioles recently claimed infielder Cord Phelps on waivers from Cleveland. If there is one player that I'm glad is now in the Orioles organization, it's Cord Phelps. Partly, it's because of the inescapable Mission: Impossible "Mr. Phelps" references. But it's also because in 2011 Cord Phelps had one of the most memorable series I've seen a visiting player have at Harbor Park, as I will describe below. But over the past four seasons, I've seen Cord Phelps play ten games in Harbor Park for the Columbus Clippers. How has he performed overall? What does he bring to the Orioles?

In July of 2010, Phelps' Columbus Clippers came to Norfolk for a four-game series. I scored three of the four games, and Phelps was phenomenal. In 11 plate appearances, he had seven hits (one double) and two walks, for a slash line of .778/.818/.889. The Clippers scored seven runs in the three games; Phelps scored two of them and didn't drive in any.

Phelps' overall production was lower in the four Clippers games I scored in May of 2011, but he made his hits count. In game 1, his only hit was a bases-loaded eleventh-inning double that drove in three runs and iced the Clippers 5-1 victory. He got three hits in the Clippers 5-2 game 2 victory, one of which drove in a game-tying run in the sixth inning and another of which was a two-run double that, again, iced the game in the seventh. He didn't do much in the Clippers 2-1, 13-inning game 3 loss, but drove in three more runs, including the game-winner, in their 6-5, 10 inning win. For the four games as a whole, Phelps' slash line was a more modest .364/.364/.591, with 1 run scored and 9 batted in (of the 17 the Clippers scored in the series.).

The Clippers' 2012 visit to Harbor Park came in early August, and I scored three of those games. Phelps wasn't nearly as impressive in those three games as he had been in either of the previous years; his slash line was .273/.333/.545. His solo home run in the Clippers 3-1 loss in the third game I scored were his only run and RBI of the series. In 2013, the Clippers came to Harbor Park in late June; while Phelps was then on the Clippers at the time he didn't appear in either of the two games I scored.

So, in the ten games I scored in which Cord Phelps appeared, he produced a .429/.467/.643 slash line in 11 games, with four runs scored and ten runs batted in.

The below table looks at his performance in the on a pitch-by-pitch basis. I've broken the results of each pitch he saw by season:

	2010	2011	2012	Total
Ball	17	25	24	66
Swinging Strike	2	6	1	9
Called Strike	3	13	8	24
Foul Ball	3	13	8	24
In-Play	9	17	9	35

Phelps swung at just under 57% of the pitches he saw. Of the pitches he took, 26.7% were called strikes and 73.3% were called balls. He didn't take pitches in the strike zone. It's harder to tell whether he swung at pitches out of the strike zone, but at least we can say that he made contact when he did swing; he missed only 13.3% of the pitches he swung at. There's not a wide variance in these results from year-to-year, and it's safe to conclude that Phelps is a contact hitter who generally knows the strike zone.

The next table shows how many times he had each ball-strike count:

	2010	2011	2012
0-0	11	22	12
1-0	4	8	8
0-1	4	12	3
2-0	2	1	3
1-1	4	10	6
0-2	0	4	0
3-0	0	0	0
2-1	4	6	5
1-2	0	5	1
3-1	4	0	2
2-2	0	6	5
3-2	1	2	5

No real clear pattern appears. The lack of 2-0 and 3-0 counts might indicate that pitchers aren't afraid to throw Phelps strikes, which corresponds well to his reputation as not a power hitter. He does seem to have worked the count deeper in more recent seasons, which might indicate that pitchers are throwing him better quality pitches and not grooving pitches in the strike zone. On the other hand, the lack of 0-2 counts might indicate both that when Phelps does swing early in the count, he puts the ball in play and that pitchers may be nibbling when Phelps comes to bat.

Cord Phelps has been projected as an infielder whose strength is his offense; his only chance to be a regular would be as a bat-first second baseman. His overall profile is similar to Ryan Flaherty. Flaherty has hit with more power and has shown worse strike-zone judgement than Phelps, and it's probable that if Phelps survives spring training, he'll start 2014 at Norfolk. If Flaherty struggles, Phelps will be a readily-available replacement.

I recognize that there is no reason to believe that Phelps has a special affinity for Norfolk's Harbor Park and that the eleven games I've seen are merely a fluke. However, when I saw that the Orioles had claimed Cord Phelps and discussed the move with my colleagues, we amused ourselves by concluding that Phelps became an instant front-runner for the 2014 International League MVP.