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

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.

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.

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.

The St. Louis Cardinals need not look far to find prime examples.

Everyone knows that Rangers slugger Joey Gallo is notorious for his pull power, but his numbers have plummeted towards the norm in recent years.

I’m sure you heard about Alex Bregman playing left field during a Gallo at-bat in one of the most extreme shifts baseball has ever seen. The Astros played to his notorious power and lack of bat control and ball placement to form a unique looking defense with a glaring flaw.

Trying to pull a ball against this defense is essentially impossible, and any standard grounder, line drive, or even bunt will result in at least a free single. Yet somehow, Gallo still managed to record an out.

What’s more, he hit the ball towards the hole in the opposite field. But he hit it right to Bregman stationed in left field. The Astros aren’t the only ones to attempt this kind of bait shift against Gallo. In fact, a majority of opponents this season have left the third base side of the infield open, yet Gallo has only managed hit .198 so far in 2018.

Teams are shifting more aggressively against left handed hitters in particular, with 30.4% of left handed batter at-bats being defended by a shift in 2018, compared to just 22.1% in 2017 and 24.2% in 2016.

The Cardinals are not one of those teams. In fact, they have had some of the most stagnant defensive positioning in the MLB over the last 3 seasons.

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.

The St. Louis Cardinals have remained rooted in the traditional defensive positioning, and it hasn’t worked out as well as in previous seasons. They are towards the bottom of the league with a .983 fielding percentage, and are just barely above league average in defensive efficiency despite having one of the lowest RA/9 in the league behind elite starting pitching.

Shifting certainly isn’t a quick fix for the Cardinals, but it has seemed to help significantly this year. While there have been teams that have been elite defensively without excessive shifting, many of the teams who have emphasized positioning against a player’s tendencies have done so with success. Here are four teams who are elite in both fielding percentage and defensive efficiency:

While Washington has been successful with relatively small shift usage, the extreme movement by the Astros, Diamondbacks, and Rays have lead to elite success. While the Cardinals allow an average .238 BAA against left handed hitters, this has been more in spite of the defense and less because of it.

One might say that the shifts aren’t the only reason that those teams are elite in preventing lefties from hitting comfortably. Houston, Washington, and Arizona’s successes could all be attributed to elite pitching as well. So we then look at the teams who shift the most against lefties regardless of defensive prowess, and the results tell much of the same story.

As I mentioned earlier, shifting isn’t your main means to an end; it is but another tool that managers have at their disposal, and can be used to put players in the best position to succeed. As a result, there will be outliers like Kansas City and the Nationals in the previous group. However, it’s safe to say that shifting against left handed hitters has been an important and successful tactic for many teams.