Thursday, July 07, 2022
Revenge of The Shift, part 2
Having earlier looked at it league-wide, the focus now will be to control for the quality of batters and pitchers when shifts happen. I will further limit it to bases empty.
From 2018-2021, the quality of LHH being shifted upon has been about 26 points higher than the LHH not being shifted (ranging from 22 to 30 points). In 2022, nothing really has changed, with a 31 point difference. In terms of the actual performance, from 2018-2021, the wOBA worked spectacularly well on LHH: based on the quality of batters with a wOBA of .347 with bases empty and unshifted, those batters ended up with a wOBA of .321 when shifted. So that's a 26 point drop. In 2022, we have 50 point drop. (This improvement in defense did not carry over with runners on base.) In other words, an extra 24 point gain in performance for the defense, over and above the gains we've come to expect of them.
As for RHH, from 2018-2021, shifts were not really based on quality of batting. The shifted RHH were only 11 points higher than the unshifted. So, whatever reason the clubs had didn't work at all, with an egregious result of 27 points higher with the shift than unshifted. In other words, the exact opposite of the success they had with LHH.
But in 2022, that has changed. The quality of batters being shifted is still the same, but now the clubs are having success, with a 10 point drop in wOBA with the shift, than unshifted. So, that's a change from +27 in wOBA before 2022, to a 10 point drop in 2022. Or a 37 point turnaround. That's an astounding turnabout. They've also seen an improvement with shifting with runners on base as well.
Essentially, the entire drop in run scoring can be attributed to the improved results on shifting on LHH and the spectacularly improved results on shifting on RHH. Whereas RHH shifting was actually INCREASING score before 2022, now in 2022, the clubs have figured it out, and shifting on RHH decreases run scoring as well.
As for why this has happened: I haven't looked yet, but maybe an Aspiring Saberist will get there first.