As I’m sure most of you have realized by now, it’s been an ugly year for offense. In fact, this is the worst offensive season in he majors since 1968, the “Year of the Pitcher.” Pitching was so dominant in 1968 (Bob Gibson’s 1.12 ERA year), that the pitching mound was actually lowered to its current level, so that batters could see the ball better. The designated hitter was also brought into existence soon thereafter.
Well we’ve now reached another crossroads. Starting pitchers are routinely throwing fastballs at 95 mph or more, a velocity that once earned Rogers Clemens the moniker “Rocket.” Bullpen pitchers throw even harder, and with plus secondary pitches to boot. To make matters worse, there’s a much deeper understanding to the science of pitching than ever before. Pitch F/x data has changed scouting reports forever, and the at-bat can now be broken down at microscopic levels.
There’s also the matter of defensive shifts. That same Pitch F/x data can also be used to break down hitting, and it’s lead to a massive uptick in the use of shifts. The idea behind shifting the defense is that if a hitter is prone to pulling the ball on contact (I.E., a left-handed hitter predominantly hitting the ball towards the right field side, and vice-versa), why not shift the infield to gobble up those balls? It’s the smart and logical thing to do, of course. More easy outs means less opportunity for the other team to score runs.
The backside of all this, from a casual viewing perspective, is a much more defensive game. To the casual fan (and a lot of gung-ho baseball people), this new pitcher’s game is simply boring. And at times, it’s hard to disagree. Just this past weekend, two games went into the 19th inning because runs are so hard to come by. This has lead to calls for illegal defense rules that would ban shifting to a certain degree. Many people have debated why this is a silly proposition, but I believe there’s two easy answers. It’s ridiculously simple to mitigate the effect of the shift. One of them is to simply go the other way. The other?
Bunt.
No, really. Bunt. Drop a good bunt up the opposite line that’s just enough that the pitcher has trouble getting to it, and reaching base shouldn’t be too much of an issue. Now, here’s the problem. The big power hitters who typically get shifted on aren’t paid to bunt; the argument goes. Why bunt against the shift when you could just hit a ball over it? Besides the fact that some people may get angry at you for not giving them a free out.
Well, because the odds are simply against you on that. The shift wouldn’t be so damn effective if “just hitting over it” was that easy. Clearly, the current approach of “change nothing” isn’t working particularly well. Is it stubbornness that prevents dead-pull hitters from working to go the other way? I never made it very far on the ball field, so I don’t know if suddenly incorporating that one’s arsenal is easier said than done. It wouldn’t surprise me. But at the same time, it clearly seemed that every ballclub came into the season with the same game plan of using the shift with wild abandon. Was every team truly so naive to think that the other 29 clubs didn’t have the same numbers? Why was no part of spring training spent working on going the other way, or bunting?
To dead pull power hitters, bunting is probably a sign of defeat. Most of them have probably never been asked to bunt in the majors. Frankly, yes, it’s admitting defeat. They have been beaten. Just as it is in pitching, predictability is not a sustainable method of play in hitting. Defensive shifts are a natural evolution of the game, so it’s time for hitting to evolve to combat it. Just wait until a power hitter starts dropping bunts up the line. After the first few instances, there will never be a line without an infielder guarding it.
Of course, that would require swallowing some pride, and re-learning the bunt. And while some big boppers may not have the speed to consistently beat out those bunts, it will certainly make managers feel less safe about shifting. But it’s not a catch-all solution. The best and most efficient way to beat the shift is to go the other way.
That’s a revolution that needs to start at the lowest level of the minors. All-fields hitting is going to be the new flavor of the week in prospect evaluation, and it’s going to be a skill that all future stars are going to have to learn. In all likelihood, we’ve seeing the death throes of the David Ortiz-type all-pull hitter. That’s probably for the better of baseball as a whole. Home run numbers may continue to shrink (as the objective of the dead-pull power hitter is indeed the long ball), but runs will come back into the game. And that should be the main objective of hitters rather than pride, no?
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