Earlier today I linked to a Bill James piece on using the shift against David Ortiz.

Having thought about it some more, this struck me as interesting:

Sounds a little low, but let’s go with it. To show the unique importance of David Ortiz in this discussion: The Shift has been used against Ortiz, over the two years, 486 times, not counting the strikeouts and walks and such like, but the most times that any team has USED the shift over the two years is 437, by Tampa Bay, and no other team is even over 300. It’s a definition of dominating a category. Remember all those articles pointing out that Babe Ruth hit more home runs than any other TEAM in 1920? Same thing; the number for an individual is greater than the number for any team. We should also remember to give The Fielding Bible credit for giving us hard data as to the number of times in a season Tampa Bay uses the shift.

Now, James discusses specifically using the shift against Ortiz, but there’s nothing special, as far as I can tell, about Ortiz as a left-handed pull hitter. Is he all that different from others who see the shift, like Mark Teixeira or Jason Giambi? My answer at the moment is I don’t know.

I do find it interesting, however, that Tampa Bay uses the shift extensively and ranks near the top in defensive metrics. The objective probabilistic model of range (PMR) rates them the best defensive team in the majors in 2011, as does UZR. Shifting for the Rays doesn’t seem to be hurting them, since they’re making plays most teams don’t. I suspect the Rays believe it helps, or they wouldn’t do it so often. I’d like to see if they always shift against specific batters, or if the batter/pitcher combination makes a difference.