Dewan: Who’s shifting and who’s not?

July 25, 2013/in /by jpomrenke

From SABR member John Dewan at ACTA Sports on July 25, 2013:

Over the last few years, the use of The Shift Defense has increased dramatically in baseball. Here are the Major League Baseball totals of the number of shifts in baseball, as tracked by Baseball Info Solutions (BIS).

2010	2011	2012	2013 Projected
2,465	2,358	4,577	7,586

Note: These are the number of plate appearances when a shift was in effect when a ball was put in play.

For many years now, most teams have employed The Shift, but only against a handful of players (David Ortiz, Ryan Howard, Adam Dunn, Jim Thome, etc.). Research done by BIS in recent years has shown there are as many as 100 batters against whom The Shift is likely to be effective. More and more teams are now shifting on more and more different players. Here are the teams shifting the most this year.

Read the full article here: http://www.statoftheweek.com

---

Originally published: July 25, 2013. Last Updated: July 25, 2013.