One of the more interesting games within the game to emerge in baseball in the past decade or so has been the defensive shift, how teams employ it and how hitters can beat it.
More data on how teams shift and its positive or negative effects have begun to be calculated, and teams have a better idea of when and how to use them. Typically, power hitters who pull a higher-than-average percentage of ground balls are shifted against the most.
At times, the shift works like a charm, and a hard-hit grounder off the bat of, say, David Ortiz ends up as a quiet groundout instead of a single. At other times, it doesn’t, as the Indians saw last year in the World Series when Kyle Schwarber repeatedly beat the shift to the right side, even with less real estate with which to work.
Per Eno Sarris of FanGraphs.com, teams across the league employed a traditional shift 28,072 times in 2016. That’s up from 17,737 in 2015. In 2013, teams shifted only 6,881 times. The Indians in particular shifted 1,011 times, which ranked 20th in baseball. It was less than half of the Houston Astros’ total of 2,052 shifts and not too far from doubling the Chicago Cubs’ total of 603, which helps to showcase the differences in opinion across the league about how often teams want to shift and against whom.
Having three infielders on one side of the infield — which forces one player to defend the opposing field — leaves open the possibility a hitter might try to bunt or poke a ball down the opposing line in order to, effectively, steal a single instead of trying to pound a ball through or over the shift.
The Indians, like the other 29 teams in baseball, are still adjusting how they want to employ the shift and against which hitters. But, in general, if the Indians are using a traditional defensive shift, they’re OK with a dangerous opposing hitter trying to poke a ball down the opposing line.
“Guys that can hit the ball out of the ballpark with that frequency, if they lay down a bunt or they try to hit a single to left, you’re happy they’re trying to do that,” Indians manager Terry Francona told reporters in Goodyear, Ariz. “The only time you really have to balance that is if that runner on second can beat you.
“A lot of times, you’ll see a guy shorten up to bunt and we don’t make an adjustment. If he wants to bunt, good. That means the ball didn’t leave the ballpark.”
That reasoning could play into why Carlos Santana, the Indians’ most shifted-against player in recent years by a long shot, hasn’t often tried to beat the shift, even though there’s a wide gap on the left side of the infield.
Santana in 2016 totaled 275 plate appearances facing a shift, which was the 17th most in baseball. Only Jason Kipnis (111) and Mike Napoli (103) among Indians hitters also had more than 100 plate appearances against a shift.
But Santana will have company in 2017. Edwin Encarnacion last year ranked 23rd in baseball with 254 plate appearances against a shift.
Still, the Indians aren’t likely to start playing games with their at-bats. It’s all in how teams and individual hitters look to continue to beat the shift without sacrificing their own attributes.
That doesn’t mean Santana and Encarnacion will never try to get creative to get on base. But the Indians like seeing opposing power hitters trying to do something they’re not used to doing, so it likely won’t start happening with their own hitters at the plate.
The Indians aren’t likely to try some radical adjustment to essentially take the bat out of their own hitters’ hands to try to beat the shift, as Santana has done at times. But using the whole field, in general, will always have its benefits — especially when it doesn’t require a power hitter to lay down a bunt.
“I do think with Carlos, the more he uses the whole field, the better hitter he is, as everybody is,” Francona said. “He goes through periods where he does, and he goes through periods where he wants to pull. Just the facts are that if you use that segment of the field, you’re not going to hit for as high an average because they’re going to take a lot of hits away from you.”
Ryan Lewis can be reached at rlewis@thebeaconjournal.com. Read the Indians blog at www.ohio.com/indians. Follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/RyanLewisABJ and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/RyanLewisABJ.