It was announced back in September that Major League Baseball would be implementing some new rules for the 2023 season. One such change will be the limiting of defensive shifts, with teams required to have two infielders on each side of second base and all four on the near side of the outfield grass at the time the pitch is released.
The exact ramifications of these changes will be discovered as the 2023 season progresses, but the hope is that some routine grounders turn into hits instead. Those players who have been shifted the most could stand to reap the most benefit from the new environment. The prototypical example of the hitter that is the most harmed by the shifts has been a plodding and pull-happy left-hander who can be neutralized by having an infielder in deep right field. However, each player is unique and will have been attacked in different ways, so let’s look at the data, with a minimum of 100 plate appearances required to be considered here. Which free agents were shifted the most in 2022? (Quick note that Stephen Vogt has been excluded since he previously announced 2022 would be his last season.)
1. Rougned Odor – 93.8%
2. Kole Calhoun – 93.4%
3. Zack Collins – 88.9%
4. Brett Phillips – 88%
5. Brandon Belt – 85.2%
6. Mike Ford – 84.6%
7. Jed Lowrie (as a lefty) – 83.5%
8. Robbie Grossman (as a lefty) – 82.6%
9. Michael Perez – 81.8%
10. Mike Moustakas* – 81%
11. Tommy La Stella* – 80.5%
12. Josh VanMeter – 79.7%
13. Luke Voit – 76.9%
14. Colin Moran – 75%
15. Adam Duvall – 71.7%
16. Gary Sánchez – 70.5%
17. Dominic Smith – 70.4%
18. Jackie Bradley Jr. – 64%
19. Jurickson Profar (as a lefty) – 63.8%
20. Didi Gregorius – 60.3%
(* – Moustakas and La Stella technically aren’t free agents right now. However, they were both recently designated for assignment and are likely to be released given their onerous contracts.)
Odor has been quite awful at the plate recently, with his batting average finishing at .207 or below in each of the past four years. However, his batting average on balls in play has been at .244 or below in each of those seasons, well below his earlier career marks and the .290 league average in 2022. Perhaps the shift bans could get him closer to his earlier career number when he hit between .259 and .271.
Belt hit .285/.393/.595 over 2020 and 2021, good enough for a wRC+ of 162 which trailed only Juan Soto and Bryce Harper among all MLB hitters in that time. He was actually shifted more in those two seasons than he was in 2022. Injuries limited him to just 78 games and tepid production this year, but perhaps better health and some more open space on the field could help him return to being one of the best hitters in the league.
As for the rest, some of these guys are role players or aging veterans, but a few of them could be sneaky value pickups in the latter half of the offseason. Like Belt, many of them are coming off disappointing and/or injury-marred years and will be looking to bounce back in 2023. Grossman posted a 118 wRC+ over 2020 and 2021 but just an 82 this year. Voit had a 153 wRC+ in the shortened 2020 season but dipped to 112 and 102 in the past two campaigns. Duvall had a 108 wRC+ over 2019-2021 but an 87 here in 2022. Sánchez recorded a 143 wRC+ in his first two seasons but just a 96 in the following five years, including an 89 in the most recent campaign. Smith posted a huge 150 wRC+ over 2019 and 2020 but has slid to just 82 since. Profar is coming off a decent campaign and is arguably the best free agent still unsigned.
Great Scott!
George Scott!
Michael Scott
Didn’t Jason Heyward sign with the dodgers?
Indeed, he did.
Gonna be interesting to see how many more runs are scored per game this season with the shift rules. I believe there will be a handful of hitters who come out of nowhere to put up all-star numbers. I think there will be some established players that go wild also. Matt Olson hit bullets into the shift all season so he could have a huge rebound yr.
Infielders having to have their feet on the dirt will have an impact as well. Plenty of middle infielders, especially second basemen that are used to playing deep and throwing runners out from the shallow outfield.
All of the changes for 2023 (bigger bases, not a lot of shifting, only three shots at picking off a runner and the pitch clock) are for adding offense. Bb is the thinking man’s game. The pitcher and catcher have to decide what pitch to throw and whether to throw it outside, inside, up or down. They’ll have 14 (or 20) seconds to decide. Again, the hitter will have the advantage. Sometimes around 1967 the Tiger’s Denny McClain won 30 games. That hasn’t happened since and probably won’t happen again since, after McClain’s 30 win season, the commissioner lowered the height of the mound. Another assist for the offense. It will be interesting to see if anyone gets a gold glove next season and the glut of silver sluggers awards that will be handed out.
The number of silver sluggers will remain the same. You don’t have multiple shortstops winning AL silver slugger awards; just one wins. The same is the case with gold gloves. Shifts were literally only for Barry Bonds, David Ortiz, and Ryan Howard. Then, Josh Hamilton started getting shifted, along with Joey Gallo, and now most guys seem to be shifted in recent years. You mention 1967, but literally all the shifting has been recent. This won’t change defense much from how it usually was unless some teams try radical things. Also, only one player wins a gold glove at each position, which won’t change. The same is true with 1 platinum glove in each league total.
There will be more shifting than degrom gets starts
In any case, deGrom’s number of starts will very likely still exceed your IQ.
All of the talk about the shift focuses on how the hitters are going to be impacted. While it will be fascinating to watch the hitting trends, I’m just as intrigued to see which pitchers will be impacted without the shift. I have yet to see anything highlighting ground ball pitchers that played on teams that were hyper aggressive with the shifts. Will make for an interesting season.
There are some good stats you can look up on pitchers who benefitted most from the shift, and some pretty well known ones whose numbers you can bet will take a hit.
I think the Twins will have a possible MVP candidate without the shift. Joey Gallo will thrive I think. his whole mentality will change and I think even his Strikeouts will drop about 10%.
Dalton you’ve obviously not followed Gallo. Possible MVP ??? This prediction falls into the delusional ranks. The shift will not change Gallos batting average by 100 plus points.
applause!
@Dalton The issue has always been Gallo’s inability to make enough contact with pitches in the zone while having great eyes to recognize balls and strikes. His numbers CAN get better if he changes his approach, as you’ve noted, to not try to hit the ball out every AB.
He may not be an MVP, but he did just have a 0.986 OPS season in 2019 and can be close to it. He is certainly well below his career average of BABIP (ba on balls in play) and has an above average hard hit %. He is a bargain for 11 million, but I just think Twxas preferred to give up a draft pick for a proven #2 and 6 million more so they can just trade for a short-term outfielder.
His mentality could have changed in previous years, and he could have hit the ball the other way.
Shopping at the MLB version of the dollar store — for teams still needing a stop gap
Belt seems like the best candidate for a big year, hope the A’s or Giants sign him.
I think the A’s will be content platooning Noda and Garcia at 1B.
I like noda i think he is going to be a good major league player, not great or a perennial allstar. Hit 15-25 HR with a line like 210/350/420 every year
Yea, but we gotta spend some of the revenue sharing funds to make sure we aren’t banned again and a resurgent Belt could be an excellent deadline trade candidate.
I think Belt is the Big Prize yet to be awarded. So under the radar, hadn’t even considered him until the last few days with these reports. Don’t know about his current health status but dude can be a needle-shifter for sure if he’s feeling well. Man alive he would fit perfectly at 1B/DH for the Mariners…replacing Santana.
He’ll have to run the bases with a Segue because he admitted several months ago that he knees are shot. This is why the Giants have shown no interest whatsoever in bringing him back.
Running bases with a Segue. That would be fun to watch
Good article. Which my Braves would get a guy or two off this list. I’d love duvall back, put him in LF and ungraded the defense with likely the same or better offensive production. Would kind of like Dom Smith also, to platoon but at that point we’d have too many already not great options on left. So I say go get duvall, hope to god he takes something like 1 year 2-3 mil (which he prob won’t) and platoon him if we need too
You forgot Correa.
Funny if in 2023 moustakas hits for 300 with no shift
It’s possible that Correa didn’t make the top 20 in shifting by opponents. As for status, the most accurate description for the list would be “Players Not on a 40-Man Roster.” That would include players who were DFA’d, who signed minor league deals, and who committed to a deal but have not yet signed.
Still don’t understad why batters never changed their approaches at the plate and kept hitting the damn ball right into the shift, every time. Talk about doing the same thing , over and over yet expecting different results…what was the rationale that batters, their coaches, their manager all used to keep failing in the same way, over and over ????
Take Rizzo. Or freeman. Left handed dead pull hitters. All the power comes from pulling the into right field and beyond. Of course if they drop back and hit the ball the other way a single may result but no power. Rizzo did this a few times but not enough.
Curious: what makes you think Freeman is a dead pull hitter?
He’s not: baseballsavant.mlb.com/savant-player/freddie-freem…
If Odor was capable of playing a solid defensive 7-position utility role, then his adjusted offensive numbers could be worth a look for any team. Or some such
But he’d have to live in Canada. Do the taxes differ for MLB players in the progressive utopia?
Some players are professional hitters who can choose where to hit it. Some made it to the top by doing a few things really well. It worked through high school, college/minors, first years in the bigs. Then the game starts being played a new way and their special tricks no longer work.
They did change their approach. BIP batting didn’t go significantly down. Strike out rates went up. They decided to elevate the ball, but doing so increases length if swing and combined with harder throwers, Strike outs naturally occurred more.
espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/24049347/mlb-hitters-expla…
youtu.be/SlzmT_Z6O58
The rationale is that they’re paid to play to their strengths.
Most of these guys haven’t been good in a while, and even adjusting their last season’s average, on base percentage, and slugging by assuming they get more singles to align their BA on Balls In Play (BABIP), these guys are awful. Give Lowrie a 0.085 boost to all 3, and he barely average, but his hard hit percentage is really really low. Belt is a guy I would love for Texas to pick up, though, along with Luke Voit. For the most part, this is theoretically interesting but not to practically applicable. Still nice to know, though
Some teams have signed multiple shortstops to play other positions. Meanwhile, other teams may just choose to make other position players play shortstop simultaneously (quite literally). I know some teams have used an additional outfielder or an additional infielder, so I look forward to Tampa Bay using their left fielder and center fielder as backup shortstops. This next season will be quite amusing. I look forward to the fun!
What if 9 of these guys made up your starting lineup? In this new defensive rule book, do you think your starting 9 could compete?
I read this and put some thought into it and here’s what I’ve got
Profar 2B
Lowrie SS
Belt 1B
Voit DH
Grossman LF
Duvall RF
Sanchez C
La Stella 3B
Heyward CF
The team has a lot of flaws like no infield defense and an inability to hit for consistency. Their poor defense would only be made clearer by the fact that they could not shift. A case could be made for Moran over La Stella at third in the name of defense or not using JHey and using La Stella at second with anyone else at third. This was what I perceived to be the best set up with these hitters (if one can call them that). Thoughts?
Expansion team
Or the Houston Astros in tank mode some years ago
As a Rays fan, would love to see Phillips to benefit. He just seems like a great guy from his time with us:)
Going to say that the overall impact from the shift rules on offense will be virtually zero. Yes, batting averages will go slightly up for some players – the league batting average will go up like .005 at the most from it.
Pitchers will adjust but also there will be a lot less walks. Pretty extensive that batters walk at a much higher rate when the shifts are employed.
This is informative, however, the way pitchers approach batters will change. That is every bit as equal as where the fielders play. So you really have to wait this out and see the results.
While the shift did take away potential hits, there were plenty of instances of batters getting hits while hitting into the shift. Determining Shift Hits and the Shift Hits Total (SHT) for each batter will be very important. Then taking the number of Shift Outs Made (SOM), we can use the SOM SHT % to determine the true impact of the rules change.
That’s quality SHT!
Odor gonna be good now.
Nah, he still smells.
When Moose was with the Royals they taught him to hit against the shift and he had success. But ever since he got paid he doesn’t want to put the work in.
applause!
Teams with lots of speed and lefty pull hitters will flourish this season. RH heavy and slow teams will be left behind on offense.
i d rather have complete breakdowns LH hitter LH/RH picthers RH/ hand hitter RH/LH pitcher.only way to dee true value. Votto and Rizzo have to be near top.
Blue Jays should bring in Belt if he is less than $4M. backup for Vlad and a decent power LH Bat off the bench
I would go with profar with his versatility and power. I like belt too!
Brian Anderson is still out there too, I think.
It is ridiculous that a game that is base on defense nd strategy to put forward the best way to win a game now is rule by someone that didn’t play baseball. These rules are nonsense. Leave baseball alone as it was. Mire offense well we already implemented the DH. Change the bases size, allowing only a limited amount of throws from the pitcher and a clock are the most silly, ridiculous rules.
Guys, all ya have to do is move your front foot forward an inch!
I want Odor back in bird land!
The mound was lowered after Bob Gibsons 1968 ERA of 1.12
An article in general about the most “shifted against” players would be interesting. I think we are about to see some interestingly revived careers this year. Could be just a feeling…
Belt likely landing spots:
1. Arizona
2. Miami
3. A’s
4. KC
5. BOS
Agree that they should leave the pitcher alone.
“They” want to change the game for those that don’t watch it.
However they also don’t do simple things to build fan base. Simple ways to do that:
1: Attendance, Appearances and honesty.
If these teams with attendance issues were honest about attendance (analytical even ), they could easily discern a reasonable estimate of how many empty seats they will have each day. If they then took that information and took a reasonable percentage of that number and assured that those tickets got in the hands of local schools and charities. It would help grow the fan base as well as Exponentially positive word-of-mouth advertising.
Simultaneously those tuning in at home would notice that apparently that ballpark is a place to be. Because now instead of seeing only a handful of people at the park you have the appearance that people are going to these games. I believe someone once said if you build it they will come.
2. Playoffs schedule
Personal example… White Sox fan here, and when they played the A’s (another arguably blue collar team) the games were scheduled during working/ school hours. How can MLB expect to build a fan base when it’s biggest games are played while it’s youngest potential fans are at school and their parents are at work. Those moments are where memories are born, or in this case for the league where opportunities are squandered.
Just a couple ways off the top of my head
We will see moving with the pitch shifting etc or am I just the one guy who thinks that?
Sorry, I should know this, but when do they show the free agent competition leaderboard??
The Rougned Odor Comeback Tour begins NOW.