Minor League Defensive Shifts

Joe Reisel's Archives

It's been several years that defensive shifts - generally considered to be three infielders on one side of second base, as opposed to the standard two - have become more mainstream in the major leagues. Once reserved for use against the most extreme power hitters, it's now commonly used against any left-handed hitter who is not known as a slap hitter and against many right-handed power hitters. But it's only been the past three seasons or so that the practice has spread to the AAA minor-league level. Indeed, over the past three years Baseball Info Solutions has asked its scorers to record whether the batter has been shifted against.

Although different organizations employ defensive shifts at the AAA level with much more variety than at the major-league level, there is some consensus. Against the Norfolk Tides' Pedro Alvarez, almost every team plays three infielders between first and second, with one player positioned several yards out in the outfield. This should be completely unsurprising, as Alvarez has a long track record. The consensus is that he pulls almost all of the ground balls he hits, and he is not a fast runner. From a competitive standpoint, it makes no sense to station a defensive player where a ball won't be hit. Most of the AAA International League teams I've seen, including the Tides, will shift against Alvarez-like players.

On the other hand, the Charlotte Knights - the Chicago White Sox AAA affiliate - don't shift at all. Even against Pedro Alvarez, their shortstops stayed on the left side of second base. While that makes no sense from a competitive standpoint, it might make sense from a development standpoint. Yoan Moncada, the Knights' second baseman (until he was recently promoted), is a young potential star and the White Sox may not want to complicate his development by incorporating defensive shifts. Or, they may want their shortstops to demonstrate their range more effectively by stationing him further away from where balls are likely to be hit.

But Charlotte's lack of shifting against the Tides isn't interesting. More interesting is the team at the other end of the spectrum, the Durham Bulls. The Bulls are the AAA affiliate of the Tampa Bay Rays, a team historically at the forefront of the new wave of defensive shifting. The Bulls shift against Pedro Alvarez, as most teams do. They shift against David Washington, a similar although less extreme player; many teams employ a shift against him. But Durham also shifted against Johnny Giavotella, a right-handed hitting singles hitter, and Drew Dosch, a left-handed hitter making his AAA debut at age 25.

These shifts were generally successful; in the press box we commented and discussed how effective they were. It then struck me that this successful defensive positioning reveals something about the Tampa organization. Unlike the other organizations with teams in the International League, the Rays knew the offensive tendencies of Giavotella and Dosch. While the Rays may have assembled a dossier on Giavotella from his major-league time in the American League, they cared enough to pass that information down to Durham. And, because the Rays' A, Advanced A, and AA teams are in leagues different from the Orioles', they couldn't have personally seen Dosch play and so relied on their scouts or video for their information.

To me, at least, this illustrates that the Rays, as a organization, focus on gathering and disseminating information.. They care enough to collect data even on marginal prospects like Drew Dosch. Presumably, they care enough to tell the Durham field management to shift against unusual candidates like Dosch and Johnny Giavotella; at least, they encourage Durham to employ such shifts. The Rays organization is willing to explore non-standard methods to win more games.

And this information-gathering is cheap. The data-gathering and video review would be done by interns or entry-level employees. The information can be sent for free via email. It's unlikely to be substantially more expensive to hire minor-league managers and coaches open to new uses of information than those who are more resistant. There may be advantages to having players used to shifting at the minor-league level, rather than learning at the major-league level.

All of this is speculation and opinion; I don't know if any of what I've seen makes a difference or if my conclusions are valid. I do know that I'll be more interested in the Rays over the next few years than I would have been without having seen Durham shift so frequently.

More Home Runs are Being Hit Because of the Middle Infield

Over half the season is in the books and one major story of the summer has been that home run rates have exploded to levels akin to the early 2000s.  Some have suggested that all of a sudden that players, all of them, found a new Performance Enhancing Drug that cannot be detected.  Of course, we can logic that out about how everyone just does not start doing something and that therapy treatments are rarely effectively trailblazed by gym rats and muscleheads.  Others have proposed that millennial pitchers lack control and command, leaving balls up in the air to be clobbered.  We dealt with that last week and it seems to hold no sauce.  And then a few folks proclaimed that the ball, while legally within specs, is more juiced compared to other seasons.

I, on the other hand, will make another argument and then I will offer some conjecture.  My argument is that we are not seeing a rise in home run rates around baseball.  What we are seeing are home run rates exploding for middle infielders.  Gone are the years of Cesar Izturises and now we welcome our Jonathan Schoops.  Below is a table with HR/PA rates and percent change from 2015.

American League
	2015	2016	%Change
Catcher	0.030	0.028	-5.1
1B	0.040	0.038	-4.6
2B	0.022	0.030	38.3
3B	0.032	0.037	17.1
SS	0.016	0.025	56.3
LF	0.028	0.026	-7.5
CF	0.022	0.025	13.5
RF	0.035	0.036	3.5
DH	0.035	0.041	16.3
Total	0.027	0.032	10.5
T wo/MI	0.031	0.033	4.6

A paired T-Test with Middle Infield included reaches significance at 0.03 while excluding the Middle Infield balloons it to 0.16.  Meanwhile, a comparison with the National League renders a greater jump with values of 0.0002 and 0.003, respectively.  Group it all together and both wind up as significant with 0.01 and 0.04, respectively.

Below is a graphical representation of how each position league-wide is impacted.  DH (not shown) is tucked into Total and Total without Middle Infielders.

So, the great home run explosion is largely the result of the current crop of middle infielders slugging the ball better than last year's batch.  Roughly, the leagues are seeing a 40% increase in home run hitting from those positions.  That is what is happening.  Now, some conjecture on why it is happening.

While the safe path is to simply call this a remarkable coincidence with so many  young exciting middle infielders this year, such as Jonathan Schoop, Manny Machado, Trevor Story, Marcus Semein, and Roughned Odor.  However, I wonder to what extent defensive shifts come into play here.  For instance, a player like Jonathan Schoop benefits greatly from a shift.  His main detriment is a lack of range while his greatest defensive advantage is his strong arm.  As such, he can play deeper back and utilize a shift to take advantage of his arm and reduce the impact of his limited range.  By doing this, you can get his bat in at second base when before you would need to rely on a more defensive player who likely has a worse bat.

Again, it may just be the ebb and flow of talent has decided to backwell into the middle infield. Or maybe it is a concerted effort to let guys with good bats stick in the middle infield until it is evidenced that they really do not belong there at all.  To a lesser extent, you also see the increase in other shift position like third base and center field.  If you batch position by shift impacted (2B, SS, 3B, and CF) vs. minimally impacted (C, 1B, LF, and RF), you see some stark differences.  Home run rates increased for the shift position by 25% (p=0.006) while minimal shift increased by 2% (p=0.19).

As it stands, it seems untrue to blame millennial pitchers.  It seems highly unlikely that there is some new wonder PED.  It seems curious that a new ball would impact only certain positional hitters.  It seems likely that for one reason or another players who are most employed with defensive shifts are those who also have a much stronger bat than those in years past.

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.