St. Louis Cardinals: A refusal to embrace the shift may be hurting

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MILWAUKEE, WI – MAY 28: Matt Carpenter #13 of the St. Louis Cardinals rounds the bases after hitting a home run in the fifth inning against the Milwaukee Brewers at Miller Park on May 28, 2018 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. MLB players across the league are wearing special uniforms to commemorate Memorial Day. (Photo by Dylan Buell/Getty Images) /

Teams have been employing shifts more and more as a tactic to manipulate and neutralize certain hitters, especially against lefties. The St. Louis Cardinals have not been one of those teams.

This trend is something that has just begun developing this year with teams shifting 17.3% of the time on average in 2018, compared to just 12.1% in 2017. If you really think about it, it isn’t surprising that the St. Louis Cardinals, a team who takes great pride in their tradition, would be skeptical to embrace such a radical scheme.

On top of that, it seems like the extremities of hitters are being cut down over the past few years despite teams suddenly acting to stop them. If anything, this year is the most diverse foul line to foul line season that we have seen in recent years.

	Highest Pull%	# of ≥ 60% Pull%	# of ≥ 50% Pull%	# of ≥ 45% Pull%	Highest Opp %	# of ≥ 40% Opp%	# of ≥ 30% Opp%	# of ≥ 25% Opp%
2014	60.5%	1	10	33	41.8%	1	20	68
2015	60.2%	1	7	24	39%	0	20	65
2016	56.4%	0	7	29	37.9%	0	16	72
2017	51.6%	0	4	26	38.3%	0	17	66
2018	55.3%	0	9	49	37.3%	0	27	82

Despite what appears to be a wider range of average spray charts, teams are still shifting towards specific tendencies a large amount, and with great success. While this may seem counter intuitive, it only looks that way in a certain frame of thinking.

If the perspective is that defenses are reacting to a player, then it is counterproductive to shift more. However, defenses have actually used shifts towards a player’s tendencies in order to force them to hit away from them.

Let’s dig a little deeper into this conundrum.

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St. Louis Cardinals: The Cardinals refusal to embrace the shift may be hurting them

By Christian May-Suzuki | May 29, 2018

Teams have been employing shifts more and more as a tactic to manipulate and neutralize certain hitters, especially against lefties. The St. Louis Cardinals have not been one of those teams.