Sunday Notes: David Stearns and Ron Gardenhire Differ On The Shift
Would MLB actually go so far as to ban the shift? Asked about that conjecture, David Stearns made it clear that he’s no fan of the idea. Not because he’s against change, but rather because change is already a big part of baseball. More specifically — yes, there have been exceptions to the rule — organic charge is already a big part of baseball.
“Teams have evolved,” the Brewers GM said during the Winter Meetings. “Strategies have evolved. Players adjust, and they will on this one as well. If shifts become completely deflating to certain profiles of players, we will value them accordingly. Things will balance themselves out. Look, we’ve been moving fielders around for decades. I would not be in favor of a ban on shifts.”
Ron Gardenhire feels otherwise. He favors an inorganic fix to the perceived (and arguably nonexistent) problem.
“I like two guys on each side,” the Detroit manager stated in equally-stern terms. “I’ve always said that. Or at least keep them all in the dirt rather than in the grass. Ask Victor Martinez. He might have hit .300 this year if they just had them on the infield. Yeah, I am old school in that respect.”
The veteran skipper elaborated on his viewpoint in a manner suggestive of… an organic substance? Going pure Gardy, he name-checked the man erroneously credited with inventing the game, another sport, and a comedy duo from a bygone era.
“I think Abner (Doubleday) when he set this game up a long time ago, he set it up the right way,” said Gardenhire. “Boom, boom, boom. You know? I don’t think you can, in football, put the whole line on one side? Can you put everybody on the left side of the field from the center? Would that be legal?… I’m just saying, let’s try to keep it normal here… I was a shortstop. If you stuck me on the other side, then I became a second baseman. I played shortstop as a second baseman. That’s confusing. That’s Laurel and Hardy stuff.”
Despite his comedic reference, Gardenhire wasn’t averse to prudent positioning this past season. The Tigers shifted 1,019 times in 2018, the 14th-highest total in MLB. Houston (2,191) and the Angels (205) bookended the StatCast leaderboard. Stearns’ Brewers ranked 8th, with 1,393 shifts.
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Meanwhile, is it fair to charge a player with an error when he makes an accurate throw that hits a runner and caroms away, allowing an extra base to be taken? Those rulings are made to account for the extra base, but on other plays a runner can be deemed to have “advanced on the throw.” I’d argue that the same should be applied here. Why should an official scorer be obligated to give an error to someone who made a good throw when a seemingly viable alternative exists?
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Jeff Albert and Mark Budaska will be working together this coming spring and summer. The former is the Cardinals’ new hitting coach, having been hired away from the Houston Astros. The latter, who has been in the organization since 2008, is now the club’s assistant hitting coach.
Their relationship isn’t a new one. Prior to joining the Astros in 2013, Albert spent five seasons tutoring minor-leaguers in the St. Louis system. The two never worked alongside each other, but they did cross paths often. As often as not, their shop talk centered around a common interest within the hitting realm.
“Mark has spent some time on the biomechanics side of the swing,” Albert explained. “That was a point of conversation when we were around each other. I’ve talked to Mark a little bit since I was hired, and I anticipate that those conversations will pick up where they left off.”
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RANDOM HITTER-PITCHER MATCHUPS
Bill Knickerbocker went 3 for 12 against Firpo Marberry.
Larry Brown went 1 for 4 against Dave DeBusschere.
Bill Bradley went 2 for 4 against Earl Moore.
John Russell went 3 for 6 against George Frazier.
Reed Johnson went 4 for 9 against Dontrelle Willis.
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Not included in Friday’s interview wth Matthew Boyd was his take on fandom within the game — more specifically, his willingness to take a step back and appreciate not only where he is, but also who he’s competing against. The Tigers southpaw readily admitted to having done just that.
“Sometimes you can’t help but think, ‘That’s pretty cool,’” Boyd told me prior to a game against the Twins. “A guy like Joe Mauer. Or earlier this year, when we were playing Texas. It’s sort of like, ‘Man, that’s Adrian Beltre. I watched him when he was in Seattle.’ Now I’m facing these guys in the box.”
I asked the 27-year-old if such thoughts ever cross his mind on the mound, or if they’re solely an away-from-the-action occurrence.
“I can’t say that I haven’t done it in-game,” Boyd admitted. “But we’re both out there with a purpose. They’re trying to put food on their table, and I’m trying to put food on my mine. I leave the admiration for later. I ask for their autograph after my start, not during it.”
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NEWSY STUFF
Zach Wilson, a 28-year-old first baseman for the Canberra Cavalry, leads the Australian Baseball League in home runs (11) and SLG (.722). Wilson played in the independent Atlantic and Can-Am leagues in 2018.
Former Arizona Diamondbacks and Atlanta Braves pitcher Josh Collmenter has a 3.45 ERA in eight games for the Aukland Tuatara. The 32-year-old right-hander didn’t play professionally in 2018 but is reportedly hoping to return to MLB.
Walt McKeel, who appeared in 11 games for the Boston Red Sox and Colorado Rockies between 1996-2002, died on January 1 at age 46. Primarily a catcher, McKeel recorded four hits in 16 career at bats.
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Given annually since 1973, the Roberto Clemente Award honors the player “who best represents the game of baseball through extraordinary character, community involvement, philanthropy and positive contributions, both on and off the field.” Cardinals catcher Yadier Molina was the 2018 honoree, in part because of his relief efforts in Puerto Rico following Hurricane Maria.
Chad Pinder was the Oakland A’s nominee this past year. The Virginia Tech graduate is active with the School of Imagination in Dublin, California, but his community service predates his 2016 arrival in the big leagues.
“It started my freshman year of college,” explained Pinder, who earned a communications degree from the ACC school. “Our head coach, Pete Hughes, had a little thing he called “19 Ways.” Throughout the year we’d do 19 different things in the community, and I saw how much impact you could have being a college baseball player in a small town. I fell in love with that.”
Special Olympics Bowling became a primary focus for the Poquoson (VA) product beginning in his sophomore year. It became an ever bigger focus in his junior year. With his coach’s blessings, Pinder made it a weekly thing. On Thursdays he would leave practice, accompanied by a different teammate each time, and bowl with special needs athletes in the Blacksburg area. His involvement didn’t end when he was drafted by the A’s in 2013. Returning to campus in subsequent off-seasons to finish his degree, he became involved in Special Olympics Volleyball.
Pinder’s relationship with the School of Imagination began with a phone call from Steven Vogt. His former A’s teammate “had done a ton of work” with the Oakland-area preschool, which “intermingles special-needs kids and kids with normal learning abilities.” Vogt felt Pinder would be a worthy successor to his own efforts, which predictably proved to be the case.
Much like he did in college, Pinder has been getting teammates involved. Blake Treinen and Sean Manaea — “they both had a blast” — are among the A’s players who have accompanied him to the school. He plans for the visits to continue.
“It’s a really good program,” Pinder told me. “It’s something I’m glad to be a part of, just like the Special Olympics were in Blacksburg. It puts so much in perspective.”
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In a post-World Series press conference, Dave Dombrowski said that when the Red Sox acquired Nathan Eovaldi from the Tampa Bay Rays in late July, they did so with the idea that they could “change his pitch mix a little bit” and make him a more effective, “based on the stuff we were using.”
That “stuff” comes courtesy of a collaboration between pitching guru Brian Bannister and a handful of other brainy members of the Red Sox coaching and front office staffs. And while their assessment proved to be spot on, it bears noting that the Rays aren’t exactly behind the curve when it comes pitching analytics. With that in mind, I asked Boston’s President of Baseball Operations if he could elaborate on the changes they had the foresight to implement.
“Tampa is a very smart organization,” replied Dombrowski, who opted not to be overly specific with his answer. “Other people — other clubs — may have other though processes on how they think that mix should be. Tampa does a great job of that, we just felt that he could throw a certain pitch or two a little bit more, and another one less.”
So what exactly were the changes that Eovaldi made? Alex Speier of The Boston Globe explained them in nerdy detail just the other day.
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LINKS YOU’LL LIKE
Jim Allen looked at every 300 plate-appearance season in NPB since 1950 and found that — unlike in MLB — left-handed hitters and right-handed hitters present distinctly different profiles. He shared the specifics at jballallen.com.
Jake Greenberg wrote about Andruw Jones’s Cooperstown Candidacy at Pitcher List.
At MassLive, Garry Brown wrote about Hall of Fame pitcher Candy Cummings, the man whom many credit with having invented the curveball.
Can Cuba baseball still be great when many of its stars have left? Ed Augustin delved into that question at The New York Times.
Chelsea Janes has left the Nationals beat and is now covering the 2020 presidential campaign. She penned her goodbye to baseball at The Washington Post.
RANDOM FACTS AND STATS
The Baltimore Orioles swept the Los Angeles Dodgers in the 1966 World Series, winning by scores of 5-2, 6-0, 1-0, and 1-0. The Dodgers went scoreless in their last 33 innings.
In a five-year stretch spanning the 1986-1990 seasons, Kal Daniels logged 500 hits and slashed .300/.402/.514 with the Reds and Dodgers.
In 1968, Bob Gibson made 16 starts on the road for the St. Louis Cardinals and went 12-3 with a 0.81 ERA.
Micah Owings slashed .244/,292/.444 with two home runs in 48 career plate appearances as a pinch-hitter. In 171 career plate appearances as a pitcher, he slashed .292/.315/.519 with seven home runs.
Adrian Beltre had exactly one stolen base in each of his last eight seasons (per Jayson Stark).
Willie Stargell had a .282 BA, 953 extra-base hits, and 1,540 RBIs. Fred McGriff had a .284 BA, 958 extra-base hits, and 1,550 RBIs.
Bill Buckner had 2,715 hits and 498 doubles. Rusty Staub had 2,716 hits and 499 doubles.
John Olerud had 768 extra-base hits and a 129 adjusted OPS. Adrian Gonzalez has 766 extra-base hits and a 129 adjusted OPS.
John Paciorek played his only MLB game on September 29, 1963. Batting seventh for the Houston Colt 45s, the 18-year-old outfielder went 3 for 3 with a pair of walks. Paciorek proceeded to hit .135 in A ball the next year and was out of the game by age 25.
Glenn “Buckshot” Wright, the starting shortstop for the 1925 World Series champion Pittsburgh Pirates, is one of 15 players in MLB history to have turned an unassisted triple play. His given name was Forest Glenn Wright.
Two people with the surname Link have played in MLB: Fred in 1910, and Jon in 2010. Both were born in Columbus, Ohio.
David Laurila grew up in Michigan's Upper Peninsula and now writes about baseball from his home in Cambridge, Mass. He authored the Prospectus Q&A series at Baseball Prospectus from December 2006-May 2011 before being claimed off waivers by FanGraphs. He can be followed on Twitter @DavidLaurilaQA.
I always enjoy these Sunday notes and all your other work, David. Your work is a nice complement to all the other great work here at Fangraphs.
Careful, ThomServo’s head might explode.
Gardenhire sounds like a guy worried he can’t keep up with the game.
Also, you can do exactly what he described in football.
I’ve yet to hear a single cogent argument as to why banning the shift would be beneficial.
Well, the argument is rather simple. Teams employ the shift to reduce offense, and assuming it is true that implementing the shift reduces offense (and certainly teams think this is true), then banning the tactic will increase offense. If one assumes that fans, in the aggregate, like increased offense (generally assumed to be true), then banning the shift will cause fans to like baseball more, and give more of their money to baseball, which makes baseball healthier and owners and players happy.
Whether one thinks banning the shift is good policy (I don’t), I don’t think the argument is baseless or hard to understand.
Here’s what I don’t understand:
1. The notion (not stated by you but implied by the arguments of others) that the current level of offense is problematic and too low, to the point where it’s necessary to alter one of the fundamental rules of baseball and no longer allow fielders to stand where they think the ball will be hit.
Over the last three seasons (the time period in which I’ve been noticing more and more anti-shift sentiment), teams have averaged approx. 4.5 runs per game, which is higher than the run-scoring levels of the 70s and 80s when many of us first became fans. (Personally, I started watching in ’76 and never heard a complaint about too much or too little offense until steroids and expansion in the 90s.)
(Now, maybe I’m misinterpreting and people are really saying, Hey, we realize the current level of offense isn’t out of line with historical averages, but we need to increase it anyway to attract younger fans. But that’s not the impression I get.)
2. The belief (again, not stated by you) that banning the shift will have an appreciable impact on offense.
As many others have pointed out, while usage of shifts has skyrocketed, BABIP has remained virtually static over the past twenty years. I realize shifts are only one of many factors affecting BABIP, but I just don’t see how banning them will make a significant impact.
For No. 1, didn’t the level of offense only stay steady because of the juiced ball and resultant HR spike? I suppose if the balls stay as they are, offense (because of increased HRs) will stay high enough.
For No. 2, for sure there is the issue of whether banning shifts would actually have an appreciable or significant impact (to use your terms), but that is of course subjective, and I don’t know the answer. I thought eliminating the 4-ball intentional walk was a good move, even if it didn’t have a significant or appreciable impact. Again though, I’m not in favor of eliminating the shift, though I do think baseball/commissioner should always be thinking of how to improve the game. And I do think there may soon come a time where the rules are changed to increase the number of balls in play.
Building off of Wonderful Terrific Monds, I’ve seen the idea that hitters have adopted a higher launch angle in an attempt to hit over the shift rather than through it. There’s an idea that eliminating the shift will encourage hitters to return back to a level swing path, which should also reduce the number of strikeouts.
Frankly, I think hitters will just keep doing what they’re doing if the shift was eliminated. We’d still have tons of home runs and strikeouts, but now we’d have one or two more ground ball singles each game.
It’s a tangential point in that it doesn’t affect gameplay, but if the traditional scorecard wasn’t already dead, shifting won’t help it survive. You might record a 5-3 groundout on a ball that was hit to the traditional shortstop position.
When I keep score, the main thing I hope for is no rundowns!
in basketball you can play man to man ,zone or some variation , ditto for football in baseball you can only play zone hence the shift..
OK, but basketball still has rules about how teams can position their players on defense – e.g., illegal defense, defensive 3 seconds. And for many years, zone defense was illegal in the NBA.
But then they fixed that zone defense rule. Also, with the NBA becoming more reliant on 3-pointers and effective field goal percentage, I could see defensive 3 seconds being eliminated.
Bonus Random Matchup:
Derek Fisher went 1-for-1 against Matt Barnes.
The 1970 NBA champions this week, the Celtics next week.
LOL google “Derek Fisher Matt Barnes”. He went a big 1 for 1 against Barnes, and Barnes wasn’t having any of it.
I don’t follow the NBA, so I googled it. Holy soap opera!
I wonder how Gardy would respond if someone pointed out to him the obvious fact that in football, on defense, you certainly can line up your players wherever on the field you would like. You could line up all 11 defenders 15 yards from the line of scrimmage if you want. The general idea is to put players in position to make a play which sounds an awful lot shifting in baseball.
I don’t really think his argument holds much water.
The center can, in fact, line up at the end of the line of scrimmage. And he would be an eligible receiver.
It’s almost as if those that want to ban the shift haven’t actually given it a lot of thought and are responding out of gut emotion.
Back in the day when men were men and I played football, we once played an ad hoc end-of-game prevent defense with one lineman and ten DB’s and safeties. I was one of four safeties and was about thirty yards downfield from the line from the line of scrimmage when the ball was snapped.
It worked, and whether a defensive formation works or not is the only reason to use it or not use it. Not if it’s not symmetrical, not if it’s not traditional, not if it’s not aesthetic, not if it offends Ron Gardenhire, just whether or not it works. And failing any or all of those four criteria is insufficient reason to ban a formation. If any of them were, then football would still be running the T formation or maybe even the single wing.
Let function and efficiency be your twin guides, and your motto be “Whatever works.”
Also, in baseball, the offensive positioning is even more-highly-regulated than football.
Re: Throwing errors. (Caveat: Errors are dumb anyway but I do care about good fielding vs. bad.) For infielders, there isn’t really such thing as a “good” throw into a runner. Part of any good infield throw is both players involved getting in a position where the runner isn’t in the way. Outfielders throwing to bases can’t help it as much, but an infielder who hits a runner with a throw has made a mistake he’s been trained not to make since youth baseball. I’m fine with putting an E on the board for that. If you are in a rare moment where you truly don’t have a lane to throw then you have to just eat (hold) it, but in a lot of those cases either you or the guy on the bag did something wrong anyway or the runner is out of the base line.
And maybe if Victor Martinez wasn’t so predictable teams wouldn’t shift against him.
If you really want to get Gardy going, ask him for his feelings about players not wearing wool uniforms anymore. It’s like he’s choosing to play a movie character, to distract from what a mediocre manager he’s become.
It’s clear that Laurila has framed the comments to amplify the effect, but my first reaction was that Gardenhire has really humiliated himself here. Reflects poorly on the GM, too.
The Speier article is meaty and worth a click. Eovaldi’s heat maps pre-9/1 and post-9/1 are amazing. His pre-9/1 is basically a black splotch focused around middle-middle that builds out evenly L-R. After Dana LeVangie (pitching coach) moved him several inches to the first base side of the rubber, the black splotch repositions itself post-9/1 as a narrow bar running top to middle, straddling the outer third (catcher’s view/RHB) of the strike zone. There’s still action in the middle of the zone, but it’s drifted upward and slightly inner third.
Fun Ron Gardenhire Fact:
Gardenhire (born in Butzbach, Germany) was one of only two foreign-born players to appear in a game for the 1982 New York Mets.
The other: Bruce Bochy (born in Landes de Bussac, France).
Btw I think we should look at the effect of playing on the grass against slow players, not just in the shift.
Miggy underperforms his his xWOBA every year by 30 points. We focus on infield hits with speed but the deep positioning against slow guys also means less grounders going through and even more liners getting caught.
I’m pretty seriously old school and even I think that shifting is a perfectly legitimate defensive tactic.
Not for nothing, Ron Gardenhire would be in favor of launching his team’s analytics department on a rocket to the sun.
Wouldn’t a rocket to the sun be too innovative?
Fine. Walk the plank.
Or perhaps a firing squad at dawn.
If the throw hits the runner then by definition it wasn’t a good throw.
Best defense against the shift is to hit to the opposite field, simple as that. Or over their heads :-0 I hope they never ban the shift. Shifting fielders according to batter tendencies has been an understood part of the game for 70+ years. Its up to the managers how often and how extreme they do it, and once batters successfully adjust to a shift, they will see the shift less. Don’t ruin game strategy. Keep the shift!