Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 453: The Continuing Effort to Counter the Shift

Episode Date: May 20, 2014

Ben and Sam banter about position player pitchers and Andrelton Simmons, then discuss batters’ latest attempts to bunt to beat the shift.

Good morning and welcome to episode 453 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives presented by the Play Index at Baseball Reference. I'm Sam Miller with Ben Lindberg. Ben, how are you? Great. Did you see that Lyle Overbay pitched? No, I did not. Wow. Yeah, Lyle Overbay pitched. First time as a big leaguer, first time as a professional. Never pitched in the minors either. And not the guy I would have guessed.

I actually always, back when I still, well, I never did it regularly enough to pull this off. But back when I was occasionally, well, more frequently in dugouts, I had this idea that I wanted to collect every manager's position player pitcher option. And A, I wouldn't have guessed Lyle Overbay. No. For the Brewers or for any team, but B, the Brewers have now used two, at least two. And this was, as we talked about with Maldonado, I think came into, was it a six-run game, and I was wondering whether that was too close to do this and whether the Brewers might be pushing the limits of what's

acceptable. Overbay also, six run lead, six run deficit. Interesting. There've been, it seems, I wonder if the rate is up of position player pitchers this year.

It seems like there've been a lot, but I'm not positive. I was, I was wondering that myself and I thought about, I thought about looking. Yeah. But I didn't. I'm watching.

That's interesting because he's 37. You figure he's been in plenty of potential position player pitcher situations, and he's never been picked until now. How was he? One batter got an out, and I'm watching it right now. It's 81 mile an hour from the stretch. It's good mechanics. 81 mile an hour fastball.

Looks like a four-seamer. Kind of has a little cut to it. Gets in on, I don't know, maybe that's Evan Gattis, and gets a pop out to shortstop. Okay. All right. Next I want to send you this. Addis and gets a pop out to shortstop. Next I want to send you this. In the great tradition of us watching great defense

but it's essentially a radio show. I've never seen this play. I just saw it for the first time. It's more than a year old and I know the reason I haven't seen it but I want you to watch it first. I am watching it.

Okay. This is Angleton Simmons, who full extension while running to his left reaches a ground ball and then flips it behind his back into his hand and then throws while running. Flips it out of his glove behind his back into his hand and then throws while running. Flips it out of his glove, behind his back, into his throwing hand. We will post a link to this in the Facebook group so that everyone can enjoy this rather than just listening to us talk about it. So you and I often disagree about what makes a good play. I find a lot of good plays to simply be more or less kind of lucky

and just the one out of ten times that it works. Isn't that interesting to me? But what about this? This is a great play, right? This is a monument to creativity and defensive excellence, right? It's creative, but I don't know. I'm not quite as high on it as you are, I don't think. Well, let's, okay, so there's a couple things.

I feel like I have done this motion routinely while I put things away in cabinets. I haven't done it at full speed, full extension, trying to throw out a major league runner. But the actual motion, it sort of surprises me that we don't see this more often. And I wonder why it hasn't been – why wasn't this news when it happened? Is it just so subtle that no one noticed? Well, I'll tell you why in a second.

But I think that it's – I can see where you're coming from and I think it's possible that you're right. To me, this flip is so delicate and it requires a bit of force with the flip. This is not that sort of loopsy-daisy flip that you do behind your back when you catch a can of pineapple that you're unloading from the groceries. He has to flip it straight into his glove, which is six feet away, six inches away, straight into his hand, which is six inches away. This is, I would imagine, unpracticed at full speed, off balance, and manages to get a grip on it, too,

which is pretty good. So the reason this is from last April, and Drew Fairservice posted about it last April. I don't know why we actually didn't see it after that, but Drew Fairservice pointed it it last April. I don't know why we actually didn't see it after that, but Drew Fairservice pointed it out last April at the score, and it says, the batter Clint Varmus beat out the throw for an RBI single, so this slow motion replay all but disappeared from the internet,

because it's not a highlight, right? I mean, some intern might have seen it and said, oh, well, that's weird, and then put the weird tag on it on MLB.com's highlights so that Cut4 could write about it. But it's not technically a highlight in a way because he didn't get the out. And so Drew continues, all that remains is this Zapruder-style video on some dude's YouTube channel, which is true. This is a vine of it. But yeah, it exists on some dude's YouTube channel. It exists on MLB TV, right?

We could go gif it if we wanted. Yeah, we could if we wanted. Well, I like it. It adds to the legend of Andrelton Simmons. And I like the idea of a defensive highlight that did not result in an out. Yeah. And he's very improvisational. He's sort of, he's like a jazz-like fielder.

He's always kind of in control, but he does things that you just don't see other guys do. Yeah, one of the nice things about this play too is that as he's doing this, the second baseman is diving behind him, which just gives you a sense of where he is on the field yeah good play all right uh all right so the topic tonight uh i think that you might be mad at me for this topic but i've been waiting for you to choose this as a topic and and you didn't choose it last friday when you were painfully untopicked uh so i feel like i to the just ask Sam some questions about angels topic that you chose

gives up any claim of ownership you have to anything else. So I want to talk about bunting against the shift. Now that we've got almost two months of data and you are the nation's leading expert, I guess, on bunting against the shift and what happens when you do it, how successful it is, how long it takes for batters to do it, and how long it takes for your fielders to adjust. I will start, if I may, with a Tim Brown tweet. Tim Brown from Yahoo, who tweeted a couple of hours ago or so that

I don't have it in front of me because I'm an idiot. But he said the great thing about the shift is watching infielders try to throw the ball around the infield after an out and not knowing where anybody is going to be. Yeah. So you

so you've been tracking how many people have bunted against the shift for hits. And last week was kind of a spike, right? Yeah. Well, the whole season really has been a spike. And I sort of informally have been tracking it just through people telling me what happens on Twitter. telling me what happens on Twitter, but more formally, Inside Edge has been tracking it, one of the data providers that tracks these things, and has been providing me with a weekly list of these instances. And yes, it seems that these bunts against the shift are way up. And this was something that I theorized and speculated about heading into the year.

Would we, with all these teams shifting so much, with the overship becoming so common and all these teams hiring defensive coordinators so that they could do this if they weren't already doing it, would we see more hitters get over the inertia and all of the various reasons not to do it and start doing it, start experimenting. And so, yes, it seems that we are seeing that. And so far this year, I'm just looking at my most recent post. So far, there have been 24 successful bunts against the shift. And by successful, I mean they've actually been fair bunts.

So I'm not counting foul bunt attempts. I'm just saying with the shift on, there have been 24 bunts, uh, that, that guys have laid down with the intent to get a hit. And that is way up from last year. It's actually a hundred percent increase over last year. Through the same date, there had been 12. And the year before that, there had been four. And I asked Inside Edge, you know, is it fair to make these cross-season comparisons? Is it possible that you're just recording them more diligently now or something like that? And they said that theoretically, at least, no,

they have been paying close attention to this. They've been trying to get them all. So as far as they're concerned, it's fair to compare and to say that bunts against the shift are really up significantly. Yeah, up 500% in two years. So a couple of questions about the composition of the bunters. of questions about the the composition of the bunters uh do you see a uh do do the worst hitter do worse hitters tend to bunt more than than good hitters are we seeing david ortiz bunt against the shift are we seeing a joey vato bunt against the shift or are we seeing a lot of uh and nothing against him but he's the first name i thought of are we seeing a lot of, and nothing against him, but he's the first name I thought of. Are we seeing a lot of Jed Lowrys hunting against the shift?

I haven't calculated to figure out whether it's an above or below average group. I probably should do that. But there has been a mix. There have been hitters of all types. There have been, you mentioned Joey Votto. He has done it. Votto has done it. Ellsbury has done it. Votto has done it. Ellsbury has done it.

Um, Carlos Gonzalez has done it. He's a, he's a frequent doer of it. He has done it in, in past seasons. Uh, Brian McCann has done it. Not that he's been a great hitter this year. Um, and it, it really ranges. I mean, Garrett Jones has done it a couple of times. Uh, Matt Carpenter is another very good hitter who, who did it, but yeah, I mean, it Jones has done it a couple times. Matt Carpenter is another very good hitter who did it.

But, yeah, I mean, it's your Ian Stewart. He's done it a couple times. Asdrubal Cabrera has done it a few times. Carlos Santana has been a frequent punter against the shift over the last couple years. So it's definitely not limited to fringy guys. And the fringier the batter, of course, the more it makes sense, the worse the expectation for swinging away.

And so if you are sort of a fringy guy who's getting shifted, and there are more fringy guys getting shifted, it seems like, then it makes more sense to do it. But it does seem that even the very best batters have done it. Okay, so of the 24 attempts, 15 of them are successful, which is better than a 600 batting average. So it clearly is an offensive weapon when batters have chosen to do it. So I'm looking at the last two that you've posted. One is Matt Joyce who bunts right in front of the mound right in front of the plate and is thrown out

by a lot. And the other one is by Garrett Jones who bunts it right down the line and is safe by forever. And so I just wonder I know that 15 of 24 are successful and so 9 guys have been thrown out but are many plays speed

dependent or are they i guess are they close are they contested or are you basically seeing these two things where it's either not close he's out or not close the guy doesn't even get a throw up i'm basically i'm asking you whether fat guys should be doing this or whether this is limited to the moderately uh athletic yeah i i think you're right. Just from having watched all of these, it does seem, I mean, there are a couple close-ish plays. I mean, if you scroll up in that last one and look at the Votto play,

that was one where maybe a speed guy could have beaten that out or had a better shot to beat it out, and Votto was out by a couple steps. But I would say that in general, most of them have been either no contest or uncontested, it seems to me, that either you get it where you want to get it. There's an open swath of field, and you get it into that field. You get it past the pitcher too far for the catcher to go get it, there's no third baseman there,

and it just keeps rolling until someone can chase it down. Or, yeah, or you mess up, basically, and you bunt it right back at someone, despite all the open territory. I don't suppose you've noticed whether guys who are unsuccessful their first time quit. I guess are they as committed to this strategy as the defense seems to be committed to its strategy? It's probably too soon to say, right? Probably. I know Raul Abanez did it a couple times despite failing the first time.

That's Raul Abanez though is a I mean he is maybe the the most persistent baseball player of our generation right I mean he failed for like a decade at the sport right um and he is he's been failing all season really in many ways but but yes 50s are going to be though. He's a 30s and 50s guy. But I should mention, and when you look at the success rate or the number of fair bunts that turned into hits in past seasons, I think it was something like batters hit 500 on these last season, too. But as someone always rightly points out, we are looking only at the bunts that were actually laid down in fair territory so to accurately assess whether this makes sense and and if you just look at the if you just look at guys are batting 600 when they get one down then yeah it seems like a total no-brainer but we have to look and see how often are they trying to get the bunt down and not getting it down. If guys are fouling off a ton of bunt attempts, if they are faking bunt and kind of intending to bunt and then pulling back and taking called strikes, then that could change the equation a little bit.

And that's something that I have just started looking at because that's something that Inside Edge was not recording. And I don't think anyone was really recording before this year the way that they did it the way bis and all these companies did it was they would just record whether there was a shift on when when the at bat ended when there was an at bat ending ball in play and so that would count as one shift but they would not record shifts shift or no shift individually based on the pitch so if there count as one shift, but they would not record shifts, shift or no shift individually based on the pitch. So if there had been a shift on earlier in the iPad and then it wasn't on at the end of the iPad, that would not count as a shift. So they were not counting bunt attempts against the shift at all. And now they are, they have now changed that software. I don't know

whether it was at my request or something that they wanted to do anyway and they're now doing it pitch by pitch. So just in this past week, I for the first time had a table of guys who attempted to bunt or threatened to bunt and what happened when they did, whether they took a strike or took a ball or fouled it off. So that's something where we will need a larger sample. Assuming that we are catching all of those, eventually we'll be able to come up with a better accounting of whether this really is as good a strategy as it seems to be.

Yeah, but just as you weren't able previously to capture the negative effect of the strike that's taken or the foul ball that's punted away, which is significant, you also, when you just look at the batting average, you're not including the positive effect of potentially forcing the defense out of the shift in future at-bats. So then let's turn to that. This is, I would argue this is probably the more interesting part of it, is wondering how many times you have to bunt before the defense stops doing it.

Because it really does seem like this could be the sort of thing where baseball never goes back and in 30 years the seven guys are considered totally fluid and are playing all over the place at all times or it could be it could basically be a flash in the pan and that three years from now after a bunch of people have bunted for hits the defense will have you know adjusted back given up on, and we'll never see it again, except in the very occasional cases like we always have. And so are defenses going back to the unshifted alignment after a bunt hit, after two bunt hits, after three bunt hits? Yeah, it varies, and that's something that one of our interns at BP,

Chris Mosch, has been looking at, and he's been going back through the video after every installment of the series to see what happened to those players in the day after or later in the game or the next series and trying to see whether word has gotten around, whether teams are aware that they do this, and whether they are adjusting as a result. And it seems like it, it varies. It's, uh, it's definitely not the case that you can lay one bunt down against the shift and, and no one will ever shift against you again, or at least that they'll, they'll leave a third basement over there. It's definitely not, not one and done.

Um, in some cases there have been no changes whatsoever. Just next at bat, next game, next series, still the shift. And the thing is that guys who do this, who show a willingness to do this, theoretically, if they've decided that this is a good move, they should do it every time, right? Yeah, I mean, if it makes sense one time, then it makes sense every time. Unless they're like trying to, you know, play some kind of long con where like, they want to get a hit now and then in certain situations, but they don't. But they want to keep the option open for for more crucial situations so like if they're down in a blowout maybe they they won't bunt against the shift because the team doesn't really need them to to get a single um and so they don't want to dissuade teams from shifting because they're

they're saving that opportunity up for some high leverage spot late in a close game or something possible that something like that is going on but it seems sort of unlikely to me because they're just many more even with the the most frequent bunters against the shift it seems to me like there are many more situations where they could be doing this if they if they thought it was a good move and so it is sort of surprising to me that that they just don't do it every time until until something changes um but it doesn't seem that they do and so teams have sort of adjusted in in most of these instances it seems like if you do it once maybe like later in the same game the the third

baseman will be over there he'll play in or something um maybe in the next game there's some artifact of this if you're a if you're a multi-timer then maybe there's there's more evidence that the teams will adjust but it seems like by the time you know the next series starts and you leave town and you go somewhere else for the most part, teams are just sort of shifting against you as, as they would have otherwise as your, as your spray chart indicates that they should. So I don't know whether this is a, an advanced scouting failure that, that teams are, are failing to, to find out which guys have done it and, and, and price that into their alignments

or whether you just really need to do it more consistently for teams to adjust. But it does seem like it varies. There's no consistent pattern. There's usually some sort of adjustment, but not full adjustment. I wonder if these guys get yelled at by the opposing team after they bunt. Yeah, I don't know. Maybe they get mocked when they get to first base or something. When I talked to Ian Stewart about it,

I wondered whether it was something that he had to clear first with Mike Socha or his hitting coach. Did he talk to anyone about with Mike Socha or, you know, his hitting coach. Did he talk to anyone about this and get their input? Which it seems like it would be a smart thing to do. Like if I were a player and I were contemplating whether to do this, I feel like I would clear it with someone or I'd ask a coach, hey, do you think this is a good idea? But he said he hadn't really talked to anyone about it. He'd spoken to Abanez about it a bit because they had both tried it, but there hadn't been any coordinated effort. He hadn't cleared it with anyone. He just

figured it was a good move. So he would do it once in a while. Just informal. You'd think there'd be some doctrine on this. Yeah, you would also think that there'd be at least one team that was mandating it at this point. And it's surprising that there isn't a team that's essentially saying, do it every time. And yeah, the keep it as a weapon kind of long con idea is interesting. Seems possible, but maybe not probable, though.

Yeah, I would think not probable. I mean, if you're... Just get the hits when you can, right? Right. And then get them to quit doing the thing they want to do. I mean, I've always had this theory that in gameplay, the correct strategy is always whatever counters the other person's strategy, even if the other person's strategy is self-defeating.

Like, you should just assume they know what they're doing. So even if it seems self-defeating, you should assume they know what they're doing, that they're rational creatures, and that you should do the opposite, or whatever counters it. And so, you know, if nothing else, the long con would let the other team keep playing the defense the way they want to yeah right and then theoretically or or in practice i mean if the shift works as well as teams seem to think it works then then you're costing yourself every every plate appearance that you don't do it not only are you not taking advantage of that possibility to to lay down the bunt but you're also costing yourself in that you're you're being shifted on you're being

played you know in some sort of optimal fashion to to rob you of hits so even even your normal strategy is not working as well um so it is kind of curious, but I, I mean, I wondered whether we would see this more. It seemed like we would have to see it more with, with all of these teams shifting. And, and I understand that there's, there's considerable, I don't know. It's like a mental hurdle you have to clear that, that you're going to do this. There have been players in the past who have expressed an intention to do it.

Like Mark Teixeira said he was going to do it one spring, and then he came out, the season started, and he never did it. And it's, yeah, maybe it's sort of a pride thing. Maybe you get up there and maybe you're embarrassed to do it, or maybe you feel like you can't do it because you're a big slugger who hasn't had practice and just hasn't really done it before. And I understand that, but it does seem like something you can pick up. I mean, part of the reason why I started this series was that Brandon Moss was talking this spring about

how he had just picked up bunting this spring. And he's not someone who had ever bunted before he's sort of a a power guy but uh he just he worked on it in spring training and he picked it up um so it seems to me like like most guys you know if you have the bat control to to hit in the major leagues i feel like with the the proper time and effort you could you could figure out how to place the bat in the path of the ball and direct it maybe somewhere. All right. So bottom line, Ben, when I was a young man, our family would get frustrated because they would always do the shift against Barry Bonds. And we would think, well, you know, take the hit, take it. They're giving it to you. And if you do it three times in a row or whatever

four times in a row or five times in a row, they'll stop it was always like that in New York with Jason Giambi or whoever so, given what we know now was that correct? especially with Bonds, because Giambi was very good, but Bonds was very good, were we correct

in wanting Bonds to lay down five Bonds in a row, bunts in a row? Or did he know better? Did he know his opponents better? Did he know his abilities better? I mean, there were times where Bonds was getting on base more than half the time anyway. So, I mean, maybe he was so good that

if there's anyone it didn't make sense for, I mean, in 2004 he has a 609 on base percentage. Oh, my gosh. I'm so sad you had to look that up. You knew that by heart. Absolutely. It's my bike lock. Shouldn't share that information. Who knows where – nobody knows which bike is mine.

Well, so yeah, so if he's getting on base more than 60% of the time, I suppose I'm comfortable saying that he couldn't have done better than that if he had been bunting. And he probably, do you have any sense of how often he was getting shifted relative to how often he would get shifted today? Well, I have a sense. I don't know if that sense is in any way accurate. My sense is that it was any time there weren't runners on.

So I don't know if it wasn't that way during his entire career with the giants but certainly toward the end it my sense my recollection is that it was it was constant it was the default just like it was for ryan howard even before the mega shifts uh started it was the default for ryan howard unless there were runners you know on base so so that 609 on base percentage was coming in that in that era after he was getting shifted regularly i mean that's my sense like i said i might be wrong uh yeah so in in his case maybe because he was getting walked so often um and because he was hitting home runs so often maybe in barry bonds Maybe in Barry Bonds' case, the bunt was not necessary. All right. Well, great.

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