Shelton is using shifts more often
Pirates rank fourth when it comes to frequency; that’s baseball in 2020
Give the Pirates some credit: They finally figured out a way to beat the Houston Astros, Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees at something.
It’s probably tough to see while watching the games on television, but the Pirates have been shifting an enormous amount under manager Derek Shelton, to the point where they’ve become the fourth-most shiftheavy team in Major League Baseball. (They were second before this past weekend.)
We’ve seen the Pirates deploy a four-man outfield and a five-man infield. Shelton also has players keep index cards in their pockets, reminding them of where to play against certain hitters.
Shelton explained that this was something they did when he was with the Tampa Bay Rays, but as far as the multitude of shifts, that’s more a product of how baseball is played in 2020.
“It’s a calculated thing in terms of, we can outline where guys hit the ball, and basically it’s just using general information,” Shelton said. “A guy hits the ball in X, Y or Z place, and we want to stand there.
“So what we’re trying to do — and what I think most teams are trying to do — is we’re trying to stand where most of the balls are hit.”
How drastic have the Pirates’ shifts been? Let’s take a look.
• The Pirates are shifting on 47.9% of their opponents’ plate appearances (632). That’s No. 4 in baseball behind the Detroit Tigers (62.1%), Los Angeles Dodgers (50.3%) and Washington Nationals (48.5%).
• Technically, the Pirates have shifted an MLB-high 303 times, which would put them second, but we should probably stick with rate stats because of the shortened season.
• Specifically against right-handed hitters, the Pirates are shifting 37.4% of the time, which is third. They’re shifting in 61.7% of plate appearances against lefties, which is ninth.
All that data comes from BaseballSavant.com, which defines a shift as whenever there are three or more infielders on the same side of second base.
The site started tracking shift data back in 2016, and the past couple years it has really skyrocketed, increasing a little more than 100% from 2018 (17.4%) to 2020 (35.3%) when talking about the league average of plate appearances in a shift.
If you ask Pirates third
-base coach Joey Cora, who works with the team’s infielders, the trend only figures to continue.
“You keep gathering more data every year,” Cora said. “In years to come, it’s going to be even more. Every team is going to do it. The hitters have to make the adjustment, but, until they do, there will be more and more shifting.”
What the Pirates have done this season represents a sizable change from the former regime, too.
In 2016, the Pirates shifted an average of 14.8% of the time, which ranked 11th. They were at 12.8% (10th) in 2017 and 14.2% (18th) in 2018.
Last season saw a big spike that took the Pirates to 30.2% (10th) in all shifts and up to 45.3% against lefties, which took their leaguewide ranking from 22nd to 12th.
But after taking one step to conform with the rest of baseball in the final year of Clint Hurdle/Neal Huntington Era, Shelton and general manager Ben Cherington have seemingly taken things to another level in 2020, at least in terms of defensive positioning.
The question is whether it has worked.
The Pirates have still made 15 errors (tied for third most in baseball) and have a fielding percentage of .974 (only two have been worse). They recently led MLB in FanGraphs’ all-encompassing stat of Defensive Runs Above Average, but they’ve since dropped to 24th (-3.1), an indication of the small sample size we have so far.
Nevertheless, the Pirates seem content to keep doing what their doing, tossing conventional baseball out the window.
“It’s just common sense,” Shelton said. “If you hit the ball in a certain place, we want to stand there so we can catch it and throw you out. We’re just trying to take our information the best we can and best apply it to our group.”