July 29, 2014

Don’t Blame the Shift

Dave Cameron notes that the shift is probably not the culprit in drop in offense:

Offense isn’t down across Major League Baseball because fewer in-play balls are getting past defenders. Offense is down in Major League Baseball because the league average strikeout rate is 20.3 percent, the highest it has ever been. If we want to change some the game to bring offense back to baseball, the strike zone is the first place to start.

I’ve been looking at offense every Monday morning, and one thing I’ve notice is that non-home run hits are at the same level as in 2013. BABIP is up this year, so BABIP is balancing the strikeouts. The lack of offense this season is almost completely attributable to the lack of home runs.

That’s the kind of thing that can break the upward trend of strikeouts. Like walks, there is a batter and a pitcher component to strikeouts. In the past, swinging hard compensated for the strikeouts by increasing power. If pitchers have reached the tipping point where batters no longer gain the advantage by swinging hard at every pitch, the correct response would be to start trying to put the ball in play with two strikes. I actually saw Jose Bautista do this against the Yankees the other day, going the other way on a two-strike pitch, and driving in a run on a hard shot to first base. It may take a while, but if velocity keeps increasing, contact hitters may become an undervalued asset.

5 thoughts on “Don’t Blame the Shift

  1. Steve H

    Also perhaps contributing to the rise in strikeouts is the spread of the belief that taking pitches to drive up pitch counts is an inherently positive thing. The more two-strike counts there are, the more strikeouts there can be. There may be a reaction, though–not to hacking at anything, but to being aggressive with hittable strikes. As the Mets’ colormen have noted, when Lucas Duda recently moved from a passive approach to a more aggressive approach, his good strike zone judgment kept him from swinging at bad pitches.

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  2. Theron

    Going off Steve H’s comment, the Brewers’ radio & TV spoke fairly often earlier in the season about the team philosophy of being aggressive early in the count. Another component beyond being aggressive was that relievers throw so hard now and are so matchup-oriented that you don’t always gain much by running up pitch counts and forcing a pitching change even in the 6th or 7th. Take it with a grain of salt since that talk’s quieted now that the team has come back to earth.

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  3. M. Scott Eiland

    There’s a “traditional” way to deal with this particular problem:

    1) Juice up the ball;

    2) Lie shamelessly to the busybodies who ask if you’re juicing up the ball, including faking tests if needed;

    3) Ease up on the juice when it makes a mockery of the game (see 1930/1931).

    4) [repeat cycle X number of years later]

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  4. pft

    I have been saying the same thing the last 2 years. BABIP has not declined and is still high historically speaking, but K rates have and are at historical highs. The expanded strike zone means players swinging at pitches out of the zone and making weaker contact. Its actually surprising BABIP has not dropped even w/o the shift.

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