How the Orioles’ Attempt to Contain Jarrod Dyson Backfired

It was the year of the shift in major league baseball this season. It was also the year of the strikeout, the year of the position player pitching and, apparently, the year of the Royals – at least so far. But it was definitely the year of the shift.

As you are well aware, shifts were up across baseball this year. We saw them more than we’ve ever seen them in the regular season, and we’re seeing them more than we’ve ever seen them in the playoffs.

When we think of a defensive shift, we think of a second baseman positioned in shallow right grass against a left-handed hitter. Recently, we’ve seen three defenders positioned on the left side of second base become more common against pull-happy righties. But these aren’t the only kinds of defensive shifts. I mean, it’s right there in the name: defensive shift. A shift of the defense, away from standard positioning, to give your team a tactical advantage. Sometimes you see the corners hug the lines. Sometimes you see no-doubles in the outfield. Sometimes you see a third baseman creep in on the bunt. These are all ways we’ve seen teams shift against a batter. For the first time since perhaps Rickey Henderson, the Orioles shifted against a baserunner.

If you’ve been keeping up with our postseason coverage at FanGraphs, you’ve read more about Jarrod Dyson in the past few weeks than you had in the rest of your life prior. One of the big storylines entering the ALCS was how the Orioles could control the Royals running game. Catcher Caleb Joseph has a strong arm and all of the Orioles pitchers are quick to the plate, so those are the things we considered. What we didn’t consider is that Buck Showalter might have a special little shift planned just for Jarrod Dyson.

Like clockwork, Dyson sits on the bench for the first five or six innings of each Royals game until it’s his time to shine. Somebody gets on base in the seventh or eighth inning, Dyson comes in to pinch run and, eventually, form the ultimate defensive outfield. It happened in all four games of the ALCS. We all knew it was going to happen, we all looked forward to when it happened. When Dyson entered the series for the first time in game one, this was the Orioles’ immediate reaction:

Can’t say for sure that meeting was regarding Dyson. Can say for sure that first baseman Steve Pearce did a lot of talking, catcher Nick Hundley nodded twice towards first base and that Pearce went back to first base positioned like this:

If you watched any of the ALCS, you already know about this. But look at how Pearce is holding Dyson on first base. He’s not on first base at all! I’ve never seen this technique before. I can’t find the quote now, but I know Dyson said he’d never seen it before, either. Here’s how the pickoff play worked, in motion:

The point here is to give Dyson a different look. Throw off his timing. When a runner is stealing on a pitch, he steals off the pitcher.

“It’s the pitcher,” Dyson said. “(Pearce) can move in any direction, I’m not looking at him. I’m going off the pitcher.”

But by having Pearce shuffle back to first base each time like that, the Orioles hoped to disrupt Dyson’s timing on subsequent steal attempts by making him think a pickoff is coming. On one instance, they nearly got Dyson on a pickoff:

The Orioles never ended up picking Dyson off first, but they did gun him down twice at second base. It’s tough to know what effect, if any, the unconventional hold at first had on either of these attempts. We can say with near certainty it made no difference on the first one, because Dyson actually beat the throw and was only called out because his slide/Jonathan Schoop’s muscles took him off the bag:

The second time was just perfect execution by the Orioles. There was a lefty on the mound, Andrew Miller, which allowed him to take a slide step when he realized Dyson was running in order to get the ball to the plate quicker. Joseph made a perfect throw down to second base and the Orioles got Dyson out the old fashioned way:

By these measures, it would appear the Orioles tactics against Dyson paid off. He only attempted two steals and he was thrown out both times. Success! But when you stray from a traditional defensive alignment in an attempt to give yourself a perceived advantage, you’re exposing yourself somewhere. You have to be. Otherwise, there would be a new traditional defensive alignment. When teams overshift, they expose themselves to opposite field hits and bunts. When teams play the infield in, they expose themselves to hard-hit balls and shallow bloopers. And when the Orioles employed this shift, they exposed themselves to an area of the infield not commonly exposed.

In game three, Norichika Aoki reached first base and the Royals removed him for Dyson. The Orioles put their shift on, and Eric Hosmer did this:

He scorched a single past a diving Pearce and Dyson advanced to third base to put runners on the corners with one out. Nobody scored to break the tie on this play, but this was absolutely a turning point in the game. The next batter, Billy Butler, flew out to left field, which scored Dyson from third to give the Royals the go-ahead run.

Typically, when a first baseman is holding a runner on, he’s able to take a few steps to his right to get in position when the pitcher begins his delivery to home plate. What the Orioles were doing in an attempt to contain Jarrod Dyson, however, has Pearce moving the opposite way when the ball is thrown, effectively taking him out of position. Here’s where Pearce was positioned when Hosmer’s bat struck the ball:

Also, keep in mind that Pearce’s left foot had just come down moments before the ball was hit, so his momentum was actually taking him away from the play, rather than towards it. Not only was he a couple steps closer to the bag than he would have been, but his momentum affected his reaction time as well:

The ball was well-struck, and we can’t say for sure whether Pearce would have made the play had he been in position. Maybe it still goes through his legs and Dyson advances to third anyway. But maybe Pearce makes a great stab and the Orioles actually turn an inning-ending double play. Maybe Pearce at least knocks it down and prevents Dyson from reaching third base to be scored on a sac fly. Point is, if it weren’t for the threat of Dyson’s speed and Showalter’s strategy to contain it, Pearce would have been in position. Instead, he had no shot at this ball. Dyson eventually scored to give the Royals a 2-1 lead, the lead held, and the Royals are now getting ready to play in the World Series. Jarrod Dyson made the Orioles do something different because of his speed, and it opened up the exact part of the field which Hosmer found on his single.

It’s funny, because it isn’t like Dyson had been running all over teams in the postseason up until this point. Sure, the Royals stole seven bases against the Athletics in the Wild Card play-in game, and so the narrative has been the Royals were beating teams with speed. Dyson, as the team’s go-to pinch runner, was the easy guy to look towards as the leader of the Kansas City track team. But he only stole one base in the Wild Card game, and that was the only steal he attempted leading up to the Baltimore series. And it wasn’t even second base he stole against Oakland, it was third.

Nevertheless, the Orioles attempted to contain him by deploying a unique defensive shift at first, hoping it would keep Dyson’s speed from being a major factor in the series. Dyson’s speed, for the most part, was contained. And the shift did end up playing a major factor in the series. Just not in the way the Orioles had hoped.