Warning Signals in Shift Increases: Part One

Shifts work. Not all the time and not against everyone but eventually there is a sufficient amount of data on a player to be able to draw some pretty strong conclusions about what advantages can be gained by shifting. There are good reasons that Joey Gallo was shifted against 98.5% of the time in 2020.

Not everyone makes it as clear-cut as Gallo, however, and players don't usually jump right into the +90%-shifted club. It's usually a gradual process, driven by continued poor performance against shifts, as well as the opponent's willingness to shift, in general. The Dodgers led the league in shifts at 55.8% in 2020, Atlanta came in last at 7.6%. Not all teams shift the same and will need varying amounts of evidence before they'll almost always shift against someone. And once things get to that point, it's probably too late to use the information to your advantage in fantasy.

The advantage is getting ahead of the fantasy pack by anticipating shift increases and the decreased production they'll bring. Josh Bell's shift% went from 33.7% (-.073 wOBA ) in 2018 to 46.9% ( -.042 wOBA) in 2019. Anticipating more shifts (and adjusting projections accordingly) may not have predicted Bell's complete crash but it might've helped scare you away from his top-100 ADP. With anticipation in mind, we'll look at everyone who saw an increase in their shift% in 2020, as well as their differences in wOBA against the different alignments. Then I'll take a deeper look at some of the more prominent names on the list and what could be in store for them in 2021

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Methodology and Shift Definitions

Facing more shifts likely doesn't tell the whole story of Bell being bad. But whether it's defensive alignment, pitch type, or pitch location, hitters will usually get more of what they've shown they can't handle until they prove otherwise. And when it comes to shifts, why put fielders where players don't hit balls to?

Let's quickly define and review some things. First, for our purposes here, we'll only be talking about infield shifts, not outfield shifts. I'll also be combining "standard" shifts, and "strategic" shifts, as defined by Baseball Savant, into one total. A standard shift is what we usually imagine when we think of shifts, and they are overwhelming the shift of choice. But for now, we're just looking for players who are vulnerable to infield positioning, regardless of how it's done.

Here's a quick review of the three defensive alignments tracked by Baseball Savant:

Standard Alignment: Not shifted

Standard Shift: Three (or more) infielders on one side of 2B

Strategic Shift: Currently a catch-all term for all positioning that is neither standard positioning nor a standard shift. For example, when just one player is out of position, such as the second baseman shifting to short right field, while all other fielders remain in their normal positions.

In addition to combining the shifts, we'll also only be looking at the players currently being drafted in the top-400 of the 2Early Mock Drafts run by Justin Mason, in order to stay focused on the players likely to be most fantasy relevant. And finally, we'll use a 50 PA minimum for 2020 and a 100 PA minimum for previous years.

Shift Increase Leaders

There were 147 hitters who met the above qualifications as well as seeing at least a 5% increase in shifts faced in 2020. They are listed below, along with their 2020 wOBA with shifts, and without. They are ordered by the number of percentage-points increased:

We'll end part one by looking at a few names in the top-100 of ADP who had significant increases in the number of shifts faced and what that could portend for 2021. And for no extra charge, I'm including my all-new "Shift Level" rating in order to provide a precise approximation of the likelihood that a player will be shifted more, doing for made-up arbitrary metrics what Michael Scarn did for spy thriller movies. Just be ready for things to get real the closer they get to Shift level: Midnight.

Christian Yelich, OF - Milwaukee Brewers (11 ADP)

247 PA: 12 HR - 39 R - 22 RBI - 4 SB

2020 Shift%: 74.7% (+30.9 points)

2019 Shift%: 43.8%

2018 Shift%: 14.8%

That probably won't inspire many believers in a Yelich bounceback but regardless of the increases in shifts faced, he actually hadn't posted large differences in his performance against different alignments prior to 2020:

I suspect Yelich seeing increased shifts had more had less to do with his performance against it in prior years than it had to do with his overall struggles in 2020. There are some legitimate questions about his fantasy performance heading in 2021 but I don't think more shifts is the one we should be stressing about. Yelich doesn't need to pull the ball to be successful (ie. yank it right into the shift) and his 33.9% Pull% in 2020 was in his normal range (and actually down two-points from 2019).

Shift-Level: Quarter-Past Seven

The bigger concern for me is whatever is going on with Yelich's plate-discipline, as he spiked to a 30.8% K% after essentially sitting right at 20% in every other season. But the strikeouts didn't rise up out of aggression, as he dropped from a 45.2% Swing% to 34.6% (league average 46.6%), with his swing% on balls in the zone dropping 11-points and his contact-rate on them dropping six-points. It's like someone dosed his plate-discipline with horse tranquilizers; Yelich swung less, made less contact, and waited longer to strike - his swings on the first pitch dropped from 29.5% in 2019 to 13.4% this season (28.3% league average).

I had hoped that his 2020 disaster would return a bigger discount than his current 11 ADP but such is life. If I'm picking at #11, I'm likely not looking at Yelich, both for the concerns listed above and his current supporting cast, which replaced Yasmani Grandal and Mike Moustakas last year with the likes of Eric Sogard, Omar Vasquez, and Dan Vogelbach. There's just too much that needs to go right for Yelich to earn his current cost.

Francisco Lindor, SS - Cleveland Indians (17 ADP)

247 PA: 12 HR - 39 R - 22 RBI - 4 SB

2o2o Shift%: 63.0% (+31.6 points)

2019 Shift%: 28.4%

2018 Shift%: 20.4%

Lindor is a switch-hitter, so we have to break down the above. Because looking at his numbers against the shift in their totality paints a different picture than when you separate them out. In total for 2020,  Lindor was shifted against 122% more than he was in 2019 and posted a wOBA against them that was 24% lower than against a standard alignment:

Breaking things down by handedness, Lindor saw big increases on both sides:

So if Lindor saw a big increase in shifts and had nearly a .100-point difference against them, should we be expecting another bump in his shifts in 2021 and knock down our expectations for his production? Probably not.

First, here's Lindor from the right side in 2019-20, with and without a shift:

The amount he was shifted went way up but it probably wasn't about how he handled them in 2019, as he put up silly numbers in the tiny sample. And while his .308 wOBA in 2020 was below average, his .328 xwOBA was right in line with his .330 wOBA in 2019. He's not destroying lefties as he did in 2017-18 (.376 wOBA, .423 wOBA) but I don't think it's for shifting reasons.

And here's Lindor as a leftie in 2019-20:

His .281 wOBA against shifts becomes less worrisome when it's backed by a .362 xwOBA, which is once again more in line with his .365 wOBA from 2019. Teams can continue to shift Lindor but it's not going to affect my valuation of him and find it more likely that he's shifted against less in 2021.

Shift Level: Quarter After Three

However, I do have non-shifting concerns about Lindor's fantasy value because I think he'll have a hard time earning back his 17 ADP if he's only in the 15-20 SB range, as opposed to the 20-25 range from 2018-19. It's not Lindor slowing down physically that's concerning (although his sprint speed in 2019-20 is down a tick from 2018), it's the decline in his (and Cleveland as a whole) rates of stealing.

Lindor's stolen bases per-PA stayed the same in 2018-19 but his attempts per-PA and attempts per-time on first base both dipped in 2019. And while his success rate per-attempt has fluctuated back and forth, his other three rates saw significant drops in 2020:

Besides Lindor's dropping rates, there's also the team itself. The Indians were one of the most successful, efficient, and aggressive teams in stealing bases in 2018 but have now fallen further back in the pack for the past two seasons. Here are their league ranks for each rate from 2018-20:

There is something to be said for the warm comfort of Lindor's floor and the knowledge that he'll be there for you all year long - since 2016, no one has more than his 3072 PA. But his ceiling is limited without 20+ steals and shortstop is just so deep that I'd rather wait if I'm not getting one of the premium speedsters in the first round.

Eugenio Suarez, 3B, Cincinnati Reds (79 ADP)

231 PA: 15 HR - 31 R - 38 RBI - 2 SB - .202 AVG

2020 Shift%: 73.3% (+21.1 points)

2019 Shift%: 52.2%

2018 Shift%: 31.2%

Suarez was actually better against shifts in 2019 (.428 wOBA) than he was without one (.334 wOBA) but that probably has more to do with hitting 49 HR, a majority of which were pulled right over the heads of all those infielders on the left side. It's easy to beat the shift when you just yank it out of the park.

However, looking at his spray chart from 2019, it's easy to see why teams took a chance on upping the number of infielders that Suarez saw on the left side this season:

Suarez rewarded those 73.3% shifts with a .307 wOBA against them that was nearly 70-points lower than his .375 wOBA versus a standard alignment:

When Suarez isn't hitting fly balls, he's usually hitting it on the ground to the left side so I doubt his 73.3% shift% goes down in 2021. And I also doubt that Suarez will try to beat the shift by going the other way (over 50% Pull% last two seasons). Suarez beating the shift means Suarez hitting dongs. But whether he does or not, more shifts are coming.

Shift Level: Half Past Ten

Suarez is going to keep getting shifted and that will keep eating into his batting average. I think we have to assume that the ship has sailed on his .283 AVG from 2018 or even his .271 AVG in 2019. But I don't think his .203 AVG in 2020 means he's going to sink to Gallo-esque levels going forward. And as aforementioned, Suarez is going to earn his keep by hitting jacks.

Seeing him drop on Fangraphs from a 47% FB% in 2019 to 40% last year doesn't hold much optimism for more power but remember that Fangraphs includes pop-ups in their FB%. On Baseball Savant (which strips out pop-ups) Suarez dropped only slightly, moving from 31.6% to 30.3% FB%, with his groundball rate staying steady. And while his average exit-velocity on fly-balls dropped slightly in 2020, he again posted an elite 14.4% Brl% that was in the top-9% of qualified hitters.

As long as you don't bank on more than a .250 AVG, Suarez makes for a great source of power at the back part of the top-100.

Yoan Moncada, 3B - Chicago White Sox (80 ADP)

231 PA: 6 HR - 28 R -24 RBI - .225 AVG

2020 Shift%: 67.4% (+21.1 points)

2019 Shift%: 46.3%

2018 Shift%: 29.5%

Moncada is another switch-hitter, so we have to parse the above. But there isn't much to talk about in regards to him facing shifts as a righthander. He only faced 15 pitches last year against a shift (7.4%), putting none in play, and since 2018, his shift% as a right-hander has been 2.1%, 4.7%, and 1.5%, respectively, of his total pitches seen. So let's just focus on his left-handed appearances.

From the shifty point-of-view, things aren't looking very pretty for Moncada:

Uh-oh. Even when Moncada was awesome in 2019 there were large differentials when facing a shift. His shift% keeps going up and up and his results continue getting worse. Looking at his spray chart as a left-hander in 2020, where would you put your fielders in 2021?

Dollars to donuts says he joins the +90%-shifted club in 2021.

Shift Level: Midnight

Good god. What now? Given his history, I find it hard to believe that he's not going to face more shifts in 2021. And going the other way probably isn't going to be an option for beating them:

Unlike Suarez, I'm far less confident that Moncada will be good enough in the other categories to make up for how much of his average will continue to get eaten up by more shifting. Suarez was still a useful asset in 2021, even with a .202 AVG, finishing as the #61 hitter ($13.1) according to the Razzball player rater. On the other hand, Moncada had a totally lost season, finishing as the #173 hitter (-$2.3).

First, the COVID-19 elephant, with Moncada acknowledging issues following his recovery, after missing the first two weeks of summer camp:

"Definitely my body hasn’t felt the same after the virus. I feel a lack of energy, strength, it’s just a weird feeling. It’s different."

Anyone that tells you that they understand the long-term effects on the performance of elite athletes (or anyone, for that matter) is lying. Just because Freddie Freeman bounced right back doesn't mean everyone does. So maybe Moncada gets back to feeling normal after more time and goes back to what he was in 2019.

But that assumption is going to need to cover a lot of ground because only one of these years is not like the other (psst...it's the good one):

Outside of 2019, Moncada's other metrics look remarkably similar. So if we think that he's closer to the player that he was in every other year, then his 80 ADP feels wa-aay too high. And it feels even higher once you factor in how even more shifts could turn him into a total batting average sink. Hard pass, Goldenface.

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