Shift Doesn’t Happen

One of the changes coming to the game is some sort of limit on shifting. We'll see how it plays out.

I don’t want to get too much into the labor negotiations, at least not in this section, so I’ll avoid my commentary on the players continuing to give and give while the owners continue to take and take but cry that they’re not getting anything. Instead, I will talk about one of the concessions the players appear to have made (nothing is done until it’s in writing, of course) where they’re allowing the commissioner’s office just 45 days to make rule changes. That’s still being negotiated, but it kind of sounds like it’ll go through. Previously, that was one year, so what that means is that anything they want to get done can be implemented in 2023 whereas without the change, 2024 would be the earliest. And one of those changes is one that I honestly have a tough time with and it’s banning the shift, or at least limiting it.

In some ways, I like it. I don’t know if it’ll end up like the rule in AA from last year where infielders had to have both feet completely within the boundaries of the infield and had a maximum of two infielders on either side of second in the second half. A lot of hitters liked that quite a bit and I can see a value of not seeing balls that were base hits a decade ago becoming easy 4-3 putouts.

I have two issues with it. The first is simply that I don’t think getting singles to right field back actually helps the game any. I don’t fully agree with the idea of “just learn to go the other way” for reasons I’ll get into in a second, but the issue with the game is not the fact that Ryan O’Hearn hits into the shift and loses hits. The issue with the game is how little action there is.

This brings me to my second point. I believe some people think that banning or limiting the shift will help to increase contact as hitters aren’t trying to hit the ball over four players and swinging and missing so much. The problem with that is something I wrote about last year during the run of no-hitters. No matter where the infielders stand, pitching is so good that the best way to score runs is to hit home runs. They could make a rule that all seven defenders have to stand in a straight line behind the pitcher and they’d still be throwing upper-90s with crazy movement and nasty breaking balls that make hitting seem impossible. But what’s (almost) done is (almost) done and the shift will be no more in 2023.

So with that, let’s take a look at some Royals who are most impacted. I’m going to include 2021 Royals who are currently in the organization even though a few of these guys likely won’t be with the team when the shift rules go into place.

The Hitters

The Royals had four hitters who saw shifts in more than half their plate appearances in 2021. I thought that was low until I looked through some other teams and realized that’s about right. The Reds, Mariners and Braves had the most with nine players while the Nationals and Marlins had the fewest with two players. Most teams were sitting around that four or five number.

All the images below are from Baseball Savant and are shifts with nobody on base.

Carlos Santana As a Lefty

Shift Percentage: 97.6%

Obviously, switch hitters are a little different, but Santana had 467 plate appearances from the left side and he faced a shift on 456 of them. And the difference was crazy. Against the shift, he posted a .280 wOBA. That’s worse than Michael A. Taylor’s wOBA of .286 for the season. But when he had a chance to not hit against the shift, his wOBA jumped to .534.

Okay, so it’s a tiny sample for a guy who is in the twilight or later of his career. But still, that’s a pretty massive jump. The Royals won’t get to benefit from him having a year or two before he needs to hang it up with only two guys capable of getting to his grounders, but someone likely will if he can hang on as a bench bat.

Ryan O’Hearn

Shift Percentage: 81.1%

This is the one that makes me re-think some things about, well, everything. O’Hearn faced the shift in 206 of his 254 plate appearances. So the sample is still tiny as it will be with these guys shifted 80 percent of the time or more. But it’s a bigger sample than Santana and it makes you just wonder if maybe there’s something he could do to justify hanging around another year. His wOBA against the shift was .244. The worst qualified wOBA in baseball last year was .249. Change the minimum plate appearances threshold and that .244 would have been fifth worst. That’s very, very bad.

But when the infield didn’t show him the alignment above, his wOBA was .405. I wrote a couple of years ago on Royals Review that all the talk of O’Hearn’s bad luck was mostly a mirage and it would just take him from a bad hitter to a slightly less bad hitter if he had better luck. But if you start to remove the shift, the conversation changes a bit on him. He does hit the ball hard when he makes contact. He barrels it more than average. And until 2021, he walked at a well above-average rate. There are still massive contact issues here and shifts haven’t kept his ISO down to utility infielder levels, but there is no doubt the shift has hurt him.

Am I changing my opinion on O’Hearn? The answer is a resounding no. Go back to 2019 and he had a .240 wOBA against the shift. That looks familiar. But when it wasn’t in place, it was just .317, which still isn’t enough. Still, the batted ball profile for O’Hearn is enticing enough at least that if the Royals keep him in the organization for another year, there would at least be a tiny justification for it even though I wouldn’t waste my time with it.

Adalberto Mondesi As a Lefty

Shift Percentage: 69.5%

Mondesi was actually better against the shift than when he wasn’t shifted, which I guess maybe sort of makes sense. He can use his speed for some infield hits to the left side if there’s only one person there, though he didn’t do that too often. I’ve thought so many times that he’s a good enough bunter to put one down the third base line and actually get a double out of it. This was the first year that he was better against the shift, so I’m guessing it’s some sort of anomaly and having more of the field to work with will be better for him whenever that time comes.

Salvador Perez

Only 15 right-handed batters with at least 10 plate appearances were shifted at least half the time and Perez was one of them. It’s easy to see why when you look at his spray chart.

A big reason why he has been able to get to so much power over the last couple of years is that he’s selling out. That doesn’t mean we don’t get to see his prodigious strength with his massive blasts to center and right, but he’s taken to pulling the ball more than ever. It’s led to an increase in strikeouts (to my point earlier), but he’s been a more productive hitter, so it’s obviously a net positive. He was actually shifted more in 2020, but some of that might have just been the small sample of the season, which was even smaller for him as he only appeared in 37 games.

The numbers are fairly equal for him, but he did do better when he wasn’t shifted. He was good against the shift because the shift can’t stop long fly balls, but his wOBA was .349. It went up to .373 without it. In 2020, it was crazy. The wOBA against the shift was .357, again very good. But without it, he had a .509 wOBA. I have a hunch that limiting the shift won’t impact him all that much, but I do think he can find himself an extra eight or nine hits over the course of a season with how hard he hits the ball, even on the ground. Let’s say the number is nine additional singles. His numbers would go from .273/.316/.544 to .287/.329/.558. That’s not a massive jump or anything, but might help cover up some of the aging curve when that starts for him.

The Pitchers

It’s not quite as simple with the pitchers. Typically with hitters, it’s the lefties, as I noted above with Perez being one of only 15 righties to get shifted that often, but with pitchers, they obviously face both sides. So with them I want to highlight the pitchers who had the best success with the shift behind them to see what might be trouble in the future.

Carlos Hernandez

Hernandez was the first pitcher to jump out in looking at the numbers. The Royals used a shift with him on the mound and a lefty at the plate 53.3 percent of plate appearances and he allowed a .220 wOBA. He was much better against them than righties in spite of a similar strikeout rate to when he faced righties and a much higher walk rate. Without a shift, the hope will have to be that he can harness the stuff and figure out how to get more strikeouts than he did throughout 2021 to give him a chance to reach his potential.

Brady Singer

Singer allowed a .350 wOBA against lefties in 2021, but it was just .310 when the team was shifted with a lefty at the plate. This makes some sense as Singer doesn’t have the pitches to handle lefties, which so many have documented, but he does get a good amount of grounders. So shift a lefty and get him to pull a ball on the ground and it has a much better shot at an out. With no shifts, it’ll become even more important for Singer to find a third pitch.

Jake Brentz

Let’s flip things and look at a lefty pitcher against righty hitters. Against right-handed batters, Brentz gave up a .322 wOBA, but it was .267 with a shift on. Granted, he’s a reliever so the sample is much smaller than either Hernandez or Singer against lefties, but it seems like he was greatly benefited from having Whit Merrifield more up the middle when righties were up.

Even after writing this, I still don’t know where I stand on limiting or banning the shift. In a lot of ways, I just wonder why, but then I also sort of do understand it. It’s going to be one of those things that just is and we’ll have to get used to it, so we might as well start now. Hopefully the hitters can take advantage and the pitchers can figure something out.

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Okay Fine, Let’s Talk Lockout

There was quite a bit of movement yesterday in the latest round of negotiations between the players and owners, which has me cautiously optimistic that a deal will get done soon. Are they close enough to avoid the cancellation of another week of games? We’ll find that out at some point today, but the owners actually started to make some concessions and put forth a pretty quality offer.

Evan Drellich @EvanDrellich

MLB’s proposal, sources tell me and @Ken_Rosenthal: • Luxury tax thresholds: 230, 232, 236, 240, 242 • Prearb pool: 40m, flat over time • Pool counts against CBT (1.33m per team) •Minimum salary: 700, 715, 730, 750, 770 (cont’d)

Evan Drellich @EvanDrellich

@Ken_Rosenthal In MLB’s proposal, sources tell me and @Ken_Rosenthal, all rule changes MLB would want could be expedited, not just select ones like pitch clock, larger bases and shift. Can’t be expedited in season though — only in offseason • Draft lottery at 6 picks. MLB was at 5 previously.

Evan Drellich @EvanDrellich

@Ken_Rosenthal Some other details of MLB proposal: • Players can be optioned max 5 times before being exposed to waivers • Small markets can pick in draft lottery for two straight years before sliding to 10th pick. • Large markets can pick only one year in lottery before going to 10th

Evan Drellich @EvanDrellich

@Ken_Rosenthal On service time, with @Ken_Rosenthal: • Top 2 Rookie of Year vote getters can get a full year of service. • A team that brings up a player for Opening Day can net 3 draft picks over time, one pick per year, if that player does well in voting

That’s a lot to unpack and the players are supposed to be responding this morning after consulting with their board following the meetings ending at around 2:30 EST. My thoughts are the CBT numbers are probably still a bit too low, but they’re much more workable for the players. The minimum salary is still also a bit too low, but it’s much more workable for the players. I don’t think the lottery itself is going to curb tanking at only six picks, but I do like the stipulation about the number of consecutive years a team can pick in it. And the final tweet should help with gaming service time some, but probably not enough to matter too much, though I’m fine with it.

My issue is that I think the players have given up so much so far, even though the owners publicly stated they didn’t think they had. With all they’ve given up, the offer above is probably fine. Take a look at some of these concessions:

• Players started wanting every player with two years of service time to be eligible for arbitration. They’ve moved to the point that there’s literally no change from the previous CBA.

• Players started wanting revenue sharing to either be eliminated or reconfigured. They’ve moved to the point that there’s literally no change from the previous CBA.

• Players started wanting a change in service time to get players to free agency sooner. They’ve moved to the point that there’s literally no change from the previous CBA.

• Players started wanting no draft penalities associated with the Collective Bargaining Tax. They’ve moved to the point that there’s literally no change from the previous CBA.

• Players started wanting no change from the previous CBA that required a year of lead-time for any on-field changes. They’ve moved to the point that they’re dropping to 45 days of lead-time, which is why I wrote the above article.

There have been other moves, but those are the big ones. It sounds like the postseason is going to be 12 teams because the players want to save that negotiation chip for the next CBA, so the move from the owners yesterday has been a welcome one and I think signifies they’re ready or a lot closer to ready to get this done. Reports are the addition of the international draft is the biggest sticking point right now, which is kind of surprising. I thought the players would fight a little more on CBT, and maybe they still will. Personally, I think the international draft is the lesser of two evils given how ridiculous international signings have become with teams reaching deals with players who are 12 and 13 years old.

One thing to note, as I also put on Twitter over the last couple of days, it seems that the Royals television deal requires them to pay back to Bally Sports when they drop below about 140 games. Assuming no rainouts (bad assumption, I know), the Royals are scheduled on the original schedule to play their 23rd game of the season (leaving 140) on April 26. If no deal is reached today and the negotiations have to start including talks about full pay vs. partial pay, it could stretch a bit longer and given that they already basically said they could reschedule a week’s worth of games, I’d look for Opening Day around the week of May 3. I’m hoping for a deal this week, though.