Dewan: Early season shift leaders
From SABR member John Dewan at ACTA Sports on April 14, 2016:
While the 2016 season is still quite young, it never hurts to get an early perspective of how team-wide and league-wide trends are developing. When diving into the early-season defensive positioning numbers, several developments relative to shifting strike us as noteworthy.
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As it stands today, teams are yet again on pace to set a record number of shifts. Last season, teams had 17,744 total shifts, and this year teams have shifted 1,540 times in a week and a half of baseball, which equates to 30,179 shifts when scaled to a full 162-game season. If the trend continues, the league as a whole would see a 70 percent increase in shifts from 2015.
Last year, we saw three teams breach the 1,000-shift mark. Currently, 12 teams are paced to hit that milestone in 2016, and six more are pegged to reach at least 900.
Read the full article here: http://www.statoftheweek.com
Originally published: April 14, 2016. Last Updated: April 14, 2016.