We Have Officially Gone Too Far With Defensive Shifting In Baseball
Fucking Padres, man. Like, what the hell is that? When it comes to defensive shifts, this was the boiling point for me. And this is coming from a Red Sox fan who saw the best hitter on his team get hundreds of hits get taken away from him because of defensive shifts over the last 13 years. This was my breaking point. How in God’s name do you shift your outfield to the point where you don’t even have a centerfielder? How? And not only that, but what fucking numbers were the Padres looking at? In his career, Matt Duffy has pulled the ball in 117 at-bats, and he’s hitting .368 with an OPS of 1.000 when he pulls the ball. He’s a right-handed hitter, so pulling the ball would mean hitting the ball to left field. Why the FUCK are there TWO outfielders in RIGHT field if he KILLS the ball to LEFT field? In addition to that, Duffy hits .321 when he goes up the middle, too.
So that’s just number one. Number two is the frequency in which he pulls the ball, goes up the middle, or to the opposite field. Here’s how it breaks down. In 678 career at-bats, Duffy pulls the ball 17.2% of the time, where the Padres basically had half an outfielder positioned. Where two outfielders were positioned the opposite way, Duffy hits the ball 27.5% of the time. And here’s where my head explodes, because Duffy hits the ball up the middle, where the Padres vacated an entire parking lot in centerfield, 55.1% of the time. If you’re going to do some dumbass outfield defensive shift, how do you not put two guys in centerfield? Why do you shift outfielders that drastically at all? Padres baseball, man. Catch the fever.