[Lukeas14]

>"The increase in frequency and efficiency of defensive shifts. According to FanGraphs, teams are shifting at a rate nearly 10 times greater than six years ago"

This should be more prominent and is likely the root cause of guys swinging for homeruns more often. Every hitter will eventually fall into a pattern where they're hitting certain pitches to only a certain part of the field. With the increase in data it's much easier for teams to recognize these patterns and position their fielders to compensate. So if you made your living hitting line drive basehits to shallow left field, halfway through the season every team will pick up on that and place an extra infielder right in your sweet spot. The same hits that got you through college and into the major leagues are now outs. This has been such a huge change that MLB thought about outlawing defensive shifts (I personally enjoy seeing the constant back and forth of strategy between offensive and defense which has always been a part of the major leagues). The obvious solution like the article mentions comes down to "the one ball that can’t be caught is the one that lands in the seats".

This is also highly dependent on the type of hitter. If you're Yankee's 6'7" right fielder Aaron Judge then swinging for the fences with a higher launch angle makes perfect sense. However, if you're Dee Gordon, one of the fastest players in the league who weighs about 175lbs, keeping the ball low is probably still going to result in higher batting and slugging percentages. Guys like Bryce Harper who can hit for power and average do seem to be leaning more towards power, which used to only happen later in their career (ex. Barry Bonds). In my observation, it seems like players such as Dee Gordon are slowly becoming obsolete as teams are prefering the long ball to playing "small ball". You certainly don't see as many teams with a true, stereotypical "leadoff guy" these days and many teams seem stacked with guys who would have been labelled "cleanup hitters" 10 years ago.

[nissimk]

It is awesome how the tactics keep changing to respond to strategic changes. There will also be a shift towards training to hit towards both sides of the infield. Not everyone can be a power hitter, and classic baseball includes a lot of "small-ball" hitting.

The increase in power hitting is also cyclical in baseball. Remember last time it dropped it was due to changes in drug testing policies and procedures which may also be a cat and mouse game.

I found this:

http://www.highheatstats.com/2013/01/reliving-the-hits-how-h...

[pgodzin]

I think speed will still be valuable as stolen bases continue to decrease across the league, as long as those hitters can still get on base at a .320+ clip. But speed is what makes players who can do it all, like Altuve, MVP candidates now.

[adventured]

I see no evidence that speed is meaningful re recent MVPs.

Harper, Trout, Stanton, Bryant, Donaldson, Cabrera, Posey, Josh Hamilton, Pujols, Votto, Pedroia, Ryan Howard, Morneau, Mauer - none of them are defined by speed. Trout has stolen a few bases, but he's not particularly fast.

The actual results indicate it's quite the opposite, MVP hitters have been on the slower side. Power very clearly matters more than speed. What nearly all the last 20 MVP hitters have in common is substantial power production, while being on the slow side.

[oso2k]

Like you mention, that's only been a trend in the last 25 years or so. Prior to that, there was some pride is in being a 30/30, 20/50, 40/20, 50/20 and more rarely, a 40/40 player. All of which could get one easily recognized as an MVP. Furthermore, the trend to long ball vs. small ball is that long ball is seen as offensive strategy that has no defense. And I think McGwire and especially Bonds, Sosa had a lot to do with it. Bonds and Sosa came up as solid candidates for 30/30 seasons. Bonds did do a few seasons of 20/50 before he almost entire switched to long ball. And when you could have players that could guarantee a homerun every 10-20 ABs, it's easy to see why long ball is seen as feasible. What's sad that Bonds was an incredibly talented hitter before he went down his long ball route. I mean, he still hit for a high average, slugging percentage, and OBP. But he used to be able to hit the situation, go the other way to avoid a double situation, and he always had an eye for walks. What was incredible to watch was that he overnight (at least it felt that way) cause teams to simply intentionally walk him 50% of the time.

In the 40s-60s and into the 70s maybe, hitters were more balanced. I think of sluggers like Williams, Mays, Mantle, Yaz, Kilebrew, Foster, McCovey, Kingman, etc. The introduction of the forkball, splitter, and changeup in the late 70s and 80s had a lot to do with the down turn in power. Hitter's technologically behind so to speak. In today's baseball, there's almost no room for a more balanced hitter like Gwynn, Boggs, Rose, Carew. Guys who only got 50-60 RBIs, a dozen or two homeruns, stole 15 bases, but who could bat for .350 in a given year and over 200 hits.

It used to be taught, speed has no off days. That doesn't seem to be true anymore.

[pgodzin]

Sorry, didn't mean it was necessarily reflected in MVP voting from the old guard of writers, more in modern sabermetrics. Trout for example, a perennial 30/30+ candidate, his speed, baserunning and defensive play are a big part of what makes him such a generational player.

[ubernostrum]

The other way to beat the shift -- which few teams/players have adopted -- is to bunt more. Which doesn't require speed, but is more effective with speed.

I've noticed it's a thing the Cubs seem to be doing a bit of; Anthony Rizzo (who maybe isn't a great example given he's not a speedy base-stealer) gets shifted on a lot, and has laid down a few bunt hits this year as a way to beat it.

[pgodzin]

You really need to pick your spots as a hitter there. For power hitters like Rizzo, opposing teams would LOVE if he bunted against the shift instead of swung for the fences. If he does it even more often, you put your 3B on the grass. Getting in their heads and making sluggers change their approach at the plate is already a win for opposing managers.

[saghm]

Most modern hitters seem to be really bad at bunting. A lot of times you'll see someone literally push the bat forward into the ball, which is literally the opposite of how to execute a good bunt. I think of bunting like free throws in basketball; they're both things that really seem like they should be so easy, and yet some of the best players really seem to struggle with it.

[jdminhbg]

I don't know for sure if Malcolm Gladwell's claim that the granny shot is a better free throw technique is correct, but I would definitely say that there's a correlation between FTs and bunting in that ego gets in the way of perfecting both. So many lefty hitters that get shifted could hit at a .750 clip with even minimally competent bunting to third that pitchers manage to master in their off time.

[philwelch]

I'm really skeptical about the granny shot. The legend of the granny shot mostly comes from the free throw record of Rick Barry, who is admittedly an all-time great from the line, but he's also the only all-time great to shoot that way, and he doesn't even have the best career free throw percentage in NBA history. Complicating matters even further, the WNBA player with the best career free throw percentage, Elena Delle Donne, has a free throw percentage a couple points higher than any NBA player (making her perhaps the most proficient free throw shooter in the history of professional basketball) and even she shoots overhand: http://www.basketball-reference.com/wnba/players/d/delleel01...

It doesn't make a lot of sense to have two completely different shot mechanics that you have to practice and train. Aside from Rick Barry, every good free throw shooter seems to use a variation on their normal shooting mechanic, sometimes starting with a consistent dribbling ritual to get them into rhythm (e.g. Rip Hamilton or Klay Thompson). Poor free throw shooters tend to be people who either don't have great shot mechanics in the first place or people who struggle with the unique mental pressure of free throw shooting. In the flow of a game it's hard to overthink yourself and get psyched out, so even guys like Bruce Bowen who could nail catch-and-shoot corner threes sometimes struggled when the game slowed down enough for the pressure to sink in.

Bunting to me seems more akin to the kind of "dirty work" that great players master and good players think they're above doing, like setting hard screens and making an effort on defense. If you're a really good bunter, you're not gonna have the kinds of numbers and highlight plays that lead to fame or fortune. Similarly, if you set hard screens or close off passing lanes or do a lot of the hard work that leads to wins but don't really lead to great individual stats, people are going to ignore you and assume a stat-chasing ball hog like Russell Westbrook is better than you.

[philwelch]

It's not "the best players" who struggle with free throws so much as the taller players. That's probably because if you're seven feet tall, it's a lot easier for you to become a valuable player at the NBA level than if you're six feet tall, so guards tend to have more developed skills than centers. Though even this is starting to change in recent years.

[nradov]

I've seen a physics analysis which indicates that being very tall is actually a disadvantage for shooting free throws because the ball approaches the hoop at a shallower angle. Essentially they're aiming for a smaller target. Shorter players have to throw the ball up in a higher arc.

[philwelch]

That's true to some extent. Hand size can also make it more difficult to hit shots. But then again, there are plenty of examples of extremely tall players or players with extremely large hands who can still hit free throws reliably.

The main difference is probably that if you're seven feet tall and athletic, you have ways of providing value on the basketball court that outweigh being a liability from the free throw line. Not so much if you're much smaller than that.

[bryanbuckley]

Does it suggest that leadoff guys will be cheaper in the future? The next moneyball trend will be fast guys who can accurately place hits?

[Lukeas14]

Possibly. My guess is that only the exceptionally good leadoff guys will make it to a team, making them more expensive. Other teams might rather have a slugger hitting first than an average fast guy. I guess we'll have to wait and see.

[saghm]

> Other teams might rather have a slugger hitting first than an average fast guy.

I remember seeing a Red Sox-Blue Jays game at Fenway Park last year where the Blue Jays had Jose Bautista hitting first, which definitely fits this description.

[rpeden]

If I remember correctly, that was actually Bautista's idea when the team was in a slump. The manager decided to give it a try, and the team started winning so Bautista saw quite a few games batting leadoff.

[saghm]

That's really cool! Honestly, it seemed really weird to me at first, but I guess if you don't have a tradional leadoff type guy, putting someone who gets on a base a lot is the next best thing, and Bautista certainly walks a lot.

[pgodzin]

There's been a trend recently to put high OBP bats at leadoff regardless of their speed (see Kyle Schwarber)

[spike021]

I mean, it's not a terrible idea to put someone like Votto or Belt even at the top spot. These guys have very high OBPs who can work the count and coax out tons of walks. If they can get on base, that's really all that matters so the next guy in line can try to get them in.

[pgodzin]

The theory has always been that those sluggers would be the ones driving people in, rather than counting on the guys behind to drive them in. So it's an interesting tradeoff - more people on base with worse hitters behind them who may not get them in or great hitters who are great at driving people in, but there might not be anyone on.

[saghm]

I remember earlier last year when the Red Sox were batting Betts, Pedroia, Bogaerts, and Ortiz as their first four and Betts was hitting a ton of home runs, my father and I thought that they go Pedroia, Bogaerts, Betts, Ortiz since Bogaerts had little power and Pedroia kept hitting into a lot of double plays. A few weeks later, they started doing Pedroia, Bogaerts, Ortiz, Betts, which was actually even better since then opposing pitchers couldn't safely walk Ortiz.

[jjuel]

And Schwarber as leadoff was a horrendous failure. See his .162 avg and .289 obp this year.

[pgodzin]

Sure this year he has been terrible. But he was also the leadoff hitter much of the year he was healthy on the WS-winning Cubs last year.

Other examples are Carlos Santana, George Springer, etc

http://www.espn.com/blog/sweetspot/post/_/id/79308/leadoff-h...

[spike021]

Yet he's still in the top 5 for the All Star pick; meh.

[pgodzin]

All Star voting doesn't mean anything other than popularity

[spike021]

Exactly. That then means actual performance doesn't matter to many fans, which is unfortunate considering how interesting this kind of data is and how players use it to improve their game.

[adventured]

Fast guys that can place hits have always been extremely rare (and will always be), even when they were considered a lot more valuable. There may be ten guys in the last 50 years that could do that at a high level, consistently, for a career.

[paulcole]

Ichiro, Clemente, Rose who else? Gwynn (who was small and fast in the beginning of his career)? Henderson had a lot of pop and wasn't notably fast. Edgar Martinez had no speed at all but could hit for an insane average.

[diogenescynic]

At the same time, the teams who shift are the teams who lose the most often. Obviously this is correlation, not causation, but it does make me doubt the efficacy of the shift.*

*I'm on my phone so I can't find the source for this at the moment, but did see it in an article in the last few months.

[spike021]

Brandon Belt gets shifted all the time and it's been interesting to see how/when he beats the shift. Sometimes there will be a huge opening, which would allow him to hit toward the opposite field.

[Lukeas14]

Usually a team will pitch to the shift though. Ex. if the shift is to the left side on a right handed batter they're not going to throw him a fastball on the outside corner. And it's much harder to take an inside pitch to the opposite field. Then again, a good hitter will recognize this, set up for the inside pitch, and launch it over the fence.

[aidenn0]

More than once, David Ortiz reached on a bunt in the shift. (For those unaware, he's a large man who is not known for his speed).

It was arguably a net loss to have him bunt though, as a medium chance of a single might not make up for the loss of the extra-bases he would hit for otherwise.