Thursday, July 07, 2022
Revenge of the Shift, part 1
Way back in 2017, and every year since, I've posted how I have been flummoxed by teams shifting on RHH. RHH has been destroying defenses every year to the point that I have each time suggested that teams should simply stop shifting on any RHH. And in 2021, teams wisely reduced their shifting propensities on RHH (all the while correctly continuing to increase their attack on LHH).
Well, in 2022, something happened. Teams reverted to their 2020 standard of shifting frequency on RHH. But, they figured something out. And whatever they figured out has drastically changed the landscape for RHH.
First, let's look at things league-wide, using my standard version of wOBA (a single always gets 0.9, a HR always gets 2.0 and so on). From 2018 to 2021, the wOBA on Shifts was 12 points higher than wOBA on non-shifts. This is obviously a biased-sample, as the quality of batters you would shift on would be higher than on non-shifted batters. For an extreme case: David Ortiz at one point represented a huge share of all the shifts. In 2022 that changed: the difference in wOBA on shifts and non-shifts is now 3 points lower on shifts.
When we look at LHH, there's been somewhat of a change. The difference from 2018-2021 was 2 points higher on shifts. In 2022, it's 9 point lower on shifts.
But RHH, that's where the big change has happened. Each year, the wOBA was higher on shifts to the tune of 23 to 39 points, for an average of 31 points. In 2022, that's all the way down to 6 points. When we break it down by runner situation, we get the following. With runners on base: it was 23 points higher in 2018-2021, and now in 2022 it is 7 points. With bases empty, it was even more pronounced: 38 points higher in 2018-2021, while it's all the way down to 8 points in 2022.
Focusing specifically on RHH, with bases empty, in 2021-22, we get this: With no shift, RHH had a wOBA of .317 in 2021 and .314 in 2022; With a shift, RHH had a wOBA of .351 in 2021 and .321 in 2022
In part 2, I'll adjust for the quality of batters and pitchers to better see the impact.
(Editor's Note: Numbers have been updated about two hours after first posted.)
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