Shift Banned? Try a Partial Ted Instead

We all know about the shift ban. This year, nary a shortstop can be found on the right side of the infield, nor a second baseman on the left. (Except, of course, for Mookie Betts.) Why, then, are we still denoting so many balls in play as occurring during “traditional shifts” on our splits leaderboards?

For those of you who don’t know, we have a great glossary section on this site. It’s what I used as a budding baseball nerd to understand what the heck Jeff Sullivan was saying about James Paxton back in 2016. In this case, I’ll point you to the section on our shift data. A traditional shift, brought to us by the folks over at Sports Info Solutions, does include the typical Ted Williams variety; that is, three infielders playing on the hitter’s pull side, a tactic used in the hopes of thwarting the great Red Sox outfielder’s offensive prowess (to little avail). Traditional shifts also include those where one infielder — usually the second baseman — is playing at least 10 feet into the outfield. These two flavors of shift are both obsolete now.

But the “partial” Ted Williams shift is having its heyday. When a shortstop (for a lefty) or a second baseman (for a righty) is “shaded” up the middle, with the corner infielder moving over towards the vacated spot halfway between the bases, that’s a partial Ted. Now, without the option to use a full Ted, teams are largely employing its partial cousin in its stead. Excluding non-traditional shifts (situational shifts — such as corners in, double-play depth, etc.), the ratio of shifts to no shifts on balls in play last year was just over 1.5 to 1. This year, it’s only dropped to just under 1.4 to 1. Hardly what you’d expect from a shift “ban.”

So what’s been the deal with the age of the partial Ted? Rob Manfred, known enjoyer of the single up the middle, fears from his experiments in the minor and independent leagues that the partial Ted is continuing to stifle those kinds of hits. MLB has in fact already begun flirting with a rule that would nix the use of this kind of shift, too. But while we have it, and it alone, we can attempt to determine whether this fear is justified.

The partial Ted, solely an infield-positioning tactic, won’t have ramifications on all batted balls. Thus, I limited my scope to those with launch angles less than or equal to 15 degrees. Essentially, this includes only grounders and catchable line drives.

First, I sought the proportion of these types of batted balls up the middle that went for singles. I found that, with a 32.1% mark, this season had the highest rate on record going back to 2015 when launch angle was introduced. The next highest rate was 2020, at 31.7%. Yet I was curious whether these kinds of hits are falling more frequently not because of the shift ban, but because players are hitting the ball harder than ever. This season, 39.2% of balls in play have been hit 95 mph or harder, 0.5% higher than the previous record set in 2021.

When looking just at BIP hit up the middle and with a launch angle less than or equal to 15 degrees, this increase in hard-hit rate is less stark. In 2023, 56.9% have been hit hard, which is the highest rate since ’18. But in 2018 and every year on record prior, the hard-hit rate on these kinds of hits was greater. My guess is that before the launch angle and shift revolutions and even during their onset, most teams were content to let hard-hitters mash scorchers into the ground or just didn’t know how to fix them yet because they weren’t incentivized to figure that out. Otherwise, it might have something to do with the switch to Hawkeye beginning in 2020.

Either way, this year has still seen harder-hit balls of the sort we’re interested in than the other years in which a high percentage of balls up the middle went for singles. Here’s what I mean:

All of the other seasons with 31% single rates have come in the last four years, and all have come with lower hard-hit rates than 2023. Strange though this chart may be, let’s focus on the task at hand: yes, this year has seen more singles on balls up the middle, but those balls have also been hit harder than in recent years, so it’s hard to tell what effect the shift ban is having on these kinds of hits.

Except there’s another wrinkle we can add. What if we just look at the percentage of hard-hit balls within the specified launch angle range that went for singles? This essentially controls for changes in contact quality across years. And looking through this lens puts this year squarely on top:

Just in case looking at all hard-hit (i.e., 95-mph+ EV) balls wasn’t enough, since this year may have had more at the top end, I also included a column that tells the same story for balls hit between 95-100 mph. Additionally, here’s the same data but for all kinds of hits rather than just singles:

The Hawkeye/shift/launch-angle revolution effect, beginning in earnest in 2020, seems a bit more pronounced in the last two columns, but otherwise, we have the same story. So is that it? Is the partial Ted really squandering its moment in the spotlight, failing to stop the one type of batted ball it’s meant for? Hold on just a second. How does this compare to the change in hits to the pull side? Admittedly, I included the table above in part as a point of comparison because due to the frequency of extra-base hits down the line, it wouldn’t make sense to look just at singles to the pull side:

Here, the hard-hit rate increases pretty steadily, so maybe the uneven trend for hits up the middle is not Hawkeye-related. If we’re going with the launch angle revolution explanation, another side effect of that is hitters trying harder to tap into their pull-side power, meaning balls up the middle becoming more typical of mis-hits.

Either way, the jumps here in hit rate are generally smaller and even negative when we look just at 95-100 mph BIP. Yes, in terms of the overall hit rate for pull-side grounders and catchable liners, the increase is larger both absolutely and proportionally than that of the same type of batted balls up the middle. But this doesn’t hold up when controlling for hard-hit rate.

My explanation for this is that when defending the pull side, fielders are still free range; they aren’t barred from standing anywhere on the dirt. But up the middle, infielders can no longer stand directly behind the second-base bag. As MLB states in their glossary, “at least two infielders [must be] completely on either side of second base.”

So, the partial Ted has not prevented the resurgence of the single up the middle. Rather than implementing the “pie slice rule,” simply precluding the infielders from standing behind the second base bag seems to have done the trick. Whether there’s more room to grow, more singles up the middle to be had, is another story; its unfolding depends on the appetite of the league.

Statistics are as of end of day, Sunday May 9.