If you have everybody on one side of the field defending against your hitting, why not just take it the other way?
Somebody tell me the philosophy of hitting into a shift?
- Thread starter HammerOfTheDogs
- Start date
You expect something philosophical from a coaching staff that consists of Lemonhead and Cheesedummy?
Because they know the batter is completely incapable of doing just that. See Hines, S.S. Hunter
I assume most of the time the pitcher would pitch to the defensive alignment making it a little harder to do, but I did find myself wondering Friday night why we didn’t just push a bunt or slap it away from the shift. Wouldn’t have taken solid contact to accomplish.
The only thing Cheese is interested in shifting is the microwave to "on" to heat a hot pocket.
That’s not just a State issue. I don’t see anyone try to hit away from the shift.
Watching the Rangers a few years back, they had hitters like Joey Gallo, who'd bat .210 and hit 40 HRs. Apparently that's what their manager wanted.
He’s more complex than that. Does Pizza Hut still have the weekday buffet?
Yeah, I don’t get it, but I’ll assume they are smarter than me. I thought the chart in the other thread today showing runs per game are actually down from 20 years ago kind of shows the defense is smarter than the offense.
I think part of it is the philosophy that even if you get a dude like Hunter Hines to poke a single through the vacated 6 hole with no one on base, its still a win for the defense because that’s another ball not traveling over the fence. It’s all based on hitter tendencies on ground balls in play. If 95% of grounders are pulled by a given hitter, you’re taking a lot of luck out of the equation against that particular hitter by doing the shift. The hitter is trying to go yard every time. If he doesn’t, and its in play, its rolled over to the pull side. And like someone else said, they pitch you to hit into it. Lots of inside pitches that it’s hard to barrel up.
Long story short - is that the whole reason the shift is there to begin with is that the hitter isn’t capable of doing what’s needed to hit away from it. If he was, they’d play him straight up.
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Agree. It’s not just us. You’ve got half the dang field to hit into. Just take it. But nobody does it. Stupid.
^^^^^what he said^^^^^
Perd and Bruce, is it that they can’t hit away from the shift or are these hitters not willing to try? Is it an ego thing?
Don't try and hit away from it. If you're left handed, just bunt the damn ball past the pitcher down the third base line. Base hit. Every time.
Of course its a hit. But again, you take a guy like Hines who literally serves no other purpose in the lineup besides being able to hit HR’s, and you get him up there bunting, its a win for the defense.
Hines is a "power hitter". Power hitters don't shorten their swing to hit the other way.
Two; You need a middle to outside pitch to hit the ball the other way. Pitchers pitch inside on Hines to make it very difficult to hit the other way, even if he wanted to.
Plus Hines stands close to the plate to make nearly every pitch an inside pitch. Therefore almost impossible to hit the other way.
But all this is true for many power hitters.
Two; You need a middle to outside pitch to hit the ball the other way. Pitchers pitch inside on Hines to make it very difficult to hit the other way, even if he wanted to.
Plus Hines stands close to the plate to make nearly every pitch an inside pitch. Therefore almost impossible to hit the other way.
But all this is true for many power hitters.
Hines had one meaningful hit in the series. I know what he's capable of but why anyone ever throws him anything other than a slider down and in is beyond me. He's had 71 AB's and has 18 hits, 15 K's and 3 homeruns. Seems the defense is winning most of the time anyway.
Don't think that tells the whole story. Pitching (velocity in particular) has improved significantly over the last 20 years as well.
The ability to hit the other way simply isn't there. I don't think it's part of any philosophy.
Yep. It's just the way the kids are being taught. Exit velocity and pitching velocity rule the day. MLB is becoming impossible to watch and college is right behind.
I expect there to be a new version of moneyball where it starts to prove out that a team full of guys who put the ball in and put pressure on the defense can score more than the strikeout brigade. Once that happens pitchers will have to learn to pitch to weaker contact by changing speeds and working the 4 corners of the zone.
The thing about statistical analysis is outliers are always going to offer the chance to outperform. 25 years ago that meant Billy Beane finding a team full of guys that walked and hit homers while battling .247 and getting undervalued by the rest of the league. MLB made up for the lack of roids by juicing the balls. The pitchers adapted with max effort and arm destroying spin rates. Now hear we are, not missing the steroid era homers and strikeouts, but instead missing the cat and mouse game of baseball that ruled for nearly 100 years.
I'd bet my favorite ball gag that a team full of Tony Gwynn and Paul Molitor types would score more runs today than teams that are constructed with modern 3 outcomes players. The difference is if you found those guys right now you could actually afford a whole team full of career .300+ batting average hitters because they've outliers and undervalued. Guys that take what the defense gives em, makes a pitcher throw 10 pitches, etc. I wonder if there's a former bulldog that fits this description on the fringes of MLB...
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I'm a little shocked it hasn't happened sooner. With pitching relying so much on fastballs, I don't know why someone hasn't built a team on contact and running up pitch counts. When the fastball loses some gas, most of these pitchers don't have the pitching acumen to get out of a jam. Seems like a good way to neutralize all these above average fastball pitchers (an elite fastball pitcher, like Skenes, will always be tough).
Today's baseball hates the Tony Gwynn's of the world. It's about the HR and extra base hits. The launch angle and bat speed bros have done this to baseball and the game is worse for it. Oh, and shorter fences really ramp it up.
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It’s not exactly the easiest thing in the world to hit a 90+ mph baseball. Especially when the pitcher wants you to hit in the shift, so he’s pitching you inside to make it more difficult for you to push the ball. Secondly, the shift is mostly against guys like Hines. He’s not a threat on the bases. He’s really only a threat of hitting a home run. It’s a win for the other team if we decide to have Hunter Hines put down a bunt to the third base side just so he can get on 1st base. Mine as well have nothing but slap hitters in the lineup if we are going to take that approach.
All this talk of bunting is giving John Cohen major wood...And I don't mean bats.
Perd is correct. I miss old baseball and do not watch MLB. After Hunter flopped for the um-teenth time to get runners home for this whole season, I didn’t even watch the second game.
If just getting on base is a win for the defense, then Hines shouldn't be playing, because that means a team can win except for 4 to 5% of the time against him just by putting on the shift.
I'd rather him get on base and if everybody else sucks too bad to get him around, so be it, that's the team we have.
Good hitters can back off the plate or inside out the ball. If they can't get their hands in that correct path close to 30% of the time, they're not good hitters. But nobody is doing that much any more, they're on top of the plate trying to yank it. And to believe a hitter can know the launch angle is silly talk too.
Others have responded already, but it’s not ego, it’s just that they physically can’t do it unless the pitcher badly misses his spots. And they really aren’t being coached to do it either. For better or worse, it’s much more simple and straightforward to not introduce major changes to a hitters approach / mechanics situationally too often because that can have all sorts of unintended consequences that take awhile to unwind….especially in a relatively short season like college baseball has.
It’s a little bit different in MLB, where you have the minors, spring training, and even the early MLB season to try and work through new approaches and tweaks. There just isn’t time for any of that in the college game. In college, you simply take what the guy does well and try to make it better with minor adjustments here and there, and try to hide the weaknesses. Teams want to win, so they aren’t going to let the uber-talented guys work through their struggles in live game action like they can in the pros.
I think maybe to qualify that statement a bit more, if a bunt single or oppo single on a ground ball is the worst-case scenario, it’s a win for the defense because he’s not going to do that 100% of the time, 50% of the time, or likely even 25% of the time, even if he tries to do it on every pitch.
Bunt attempts get missed, go foul, get pushed to the pitcher or opposite baseline, get popped up all the time. A ball hit the other way might still get grabbed by the 3B or SS that is on that side, or even the pitcher if its a dribbler. Hitter may have a hard time adjusting his timing enough to hit the favorable location pitch for going the other way, because it’s a fastball when he’s looking off-speed or vice versa. When you’re dealing with dead pull power hitters, a lot more can go wrong for the hitter than the defense when you do the shift. And the absolute worst scenario for the defense is still relatively tame. That’s why it works.
Already happened. MSU and UCLA played for a natty 12 years ago playing like that. And in MLB it was the Royals during that same time.
The new baseballs made is less advantageous though, which played even moreso into analytics.
I don't know if we ever see pro ball going back, because it simply does not pay to do it anymore, in their setup. You can get away with a more aggressive, smaller-ish ball style in college. But it's real hard to win without a shut down pitcher with high velo and a couple guys that can drop bombs.
What the analytics REALLY did....was expose the game of baseball.
How was the personal pan pizza always better than anything else they made? Seems they could have scaled that greatness up, but the bigger pizzas were just not the same.
Can't be done. Same with the fun sized snickers. Scale and ratios matter.
Not that I was a dead pull hitter but I never looked at how they were playing me because no one can play beyond the fence. I even believed me walking was a win for the pitcher. I would NEVER look to take a HBP. I didn't have speed to hurt them on the base paths. When I was up I hated for the runner to steal second base because that could take the bat out of my hands. It happened in 1981 CWS. I was up in a position to win the game but a wild pitch moved the runners up in the bottom of the last inning and they then walked me. Terry Loe then hit a hard ground ball that just didn't find a hole and we were out.
Now if your not a real threat to go yard then you should Wee Willie Keeler the AB and "Hit 'em where they ain't".
Hitting 90+ mph fastballs was easy. It's when they mixed in changeups and curvy things that made it tricky.
Plus, you either made it yourself on a field trip or you earned those bad boys by reading books. Things are better when you earn them.
I would do that in a heartbeat if they got into the shift before strike 2. With 2 strikes bunting is very risky because a foul ball then is a K. That is why many times a team will not get in the shift until 2 strikes on the batter.
Ha good point…. From the looks of your stats, you did ok with those changeups and curve balls too!