4th and short.

[BrassBulls12]

32 minutes ago, BDYZR said:

EVERY batter in this article had a lower batting average against the shift.

https://www.mlb.com/news/which-players-are-hurt-most-by-infield-shift/c-263778660

 

 

For this exercise, we'll use the Statcast™ metric called expected batting average (xBA), which predicts what a hitter should have hit based on the quality of contact, combining exit velocity and launch angle. If we narrow xBA to focus only on a hitter's ground balls, then find the difference between that and his actual batting average on grounders, we begin to get a picture of how much an abnormal defensive alignment could've cut into those numbers.

All these numbers do is calculate what could have happened base on how hard the ball was hit and at what lunch angle. It doesn't distinguish whether the defensive alignment played any role. 

My opinion on the shift really comes from listening to Bill Ripken. I think he is  very knowledgeable about how to be great defensively. Please, watch Billy break it down and refute his findings 

https://www.mlb.com/video/bill-ripken-discusses-shifts/c-1277039083 

 

 

[Bull94]

33 minutes ago, BrassBulls12 said:

 

For this exercise, we'll use the Statcast™ metric called expected batting average (xBA), which predicts what a hitter should have hit based on the quality of contact, combining exit velocity and launch angle. If we narrow xBA to focus only on a hitter's ground balls, then find the difference between that and his actual batting average on grounders, we begin to get a picture of how much an abnormal defensive alignment could've cut into those numbers.

All these numbers do is calculate what could have happened base on how hard the ball was hit and at what lunch angle. It doesn't distinguish whether the defensive alignment played any role. 

My opinion on the shift really comes from listening to Bill Ripken. I think he is  very knowledgeable about how to be great defensively. Please, watch Billy break it down and refute his findings 

https://www.mlb.com/video/bill-ripken-discusses-shifts/c-1277039083 

 

 

this is quite possibly the dumbest analysis ever. he didn't compare the shift to not shifting.he compared it to itself. he does realize that shifting would statistically stay the same from year to year on average right?What if he looked at BABIP when they didn't shift and their averages were 15 points  lower compared to shifting from year to year on average? would he think differently then? This guy clearly has a high school understanding of data analysis.In fact he only graduated high school.He does realize that the BABIP year to year would be virtually identical no matter how many times it was implemented, which it was. honestly it is so stupid that he actually thinks this proves anything. all it proves is that he doesn't understand how to analyze shifting to not shifting.

 

read the article you posted. the guy clearly did an analysis on the subject and discovered that in actual game play batting average on balls in play is lower when accounting for the shift. his reason why the shift shouldn't be implemented in some situations is because he said they create more walks although he did say against dead pull hitters that they should play the shift. it's an actual study done with real world stats.

but it was proven even in his analysis that shifting does lower batting averages compared to not shifting. his only argument was that it created more walks.

Edited November 30, 2018 by Bull94

[BrassBulls12]

56 minutes ago, Bull94 said:

this is quite possibly the dumbest analysis ever.

This is just false so i am gonna leave that alone 

 

56 minutes ago, Bull94 said:

That the BABIP year to year would be virtually identical no matter how many times it was implemented, which it was.

 He's not comparing it to itself he is comparing the number of shifts vs the league BABIP. It shows that an increase in shifts over the fours years also produced an increase in BABIP, not a decrease as it should have. Your reasoning is flawed, if the shift worked better than normal alignment, why would the BABIP stay the same? It wouldn't unless the shift has no affect. Except that didn't happen here. it increased. 

 

56 minutes ago, Bull94 said:

ad the article you posted. the guy clearly did an analysis on the subject and discovered that in actual game play batting average on balls in play is lower when accounting for the shift. his reason why the shift shouldn't be implemented in some situations is because he said they create more walks although he did say against dead pull hitters that they should play the shift. it's an actual study done with real world stats.

What my article said was... 

By focusing on BABIP, we missed the fact that the battle was already lost.

The point it is making is that the shift affects the how the pitcher pitches. 

Even though the shift is good at gobbling up ground balls and line drives, it has the secondary effect of making pitchers throw more pitches out of the strike zone. They don't appear to be pitching to the shift -- by throwing more pitches on the inner part of the plate, for instance -- but merely pitching away from contact, nibbling more and throwing fewer fastballs. This all means more balls. More balls mean more walks, and they also mean more hitter's counts, which means more doubles, more triples, more home runs and fewer strikeouts.

In other words, they don't want to be in the zone on the inner half because of the likelihood of a base hit with or without the shift, and they don't want to be in the zone on the outer half because of the likelihood they the hitter the other way and the lack of defenders there. So they nitpick more which causes more walks and hitters counts 

now it does say that there is a drop of BABIP on the shift.  One says a drop in 18 points against the 200 most shifted players. Which has the same flaws you so eloquently point out for Mr. Ripken The other looked at player who saw the shift sometimes and not others and it found a drop of........ a whopping 8 points. 

• Mike Petriello of MLB.com used Statcast data this spring to find that among the 200 most-shifted players, batting averages on balls in play dropped 18 points when the shift was on.

• And Russell Carleton of Baseball Prospectus, and the author of "The Shift: The Next Evolution In Baseball Thinking," looked at batters who had a lot of plate appearances without shifts, as well as some with shifts. For those batters, Carleton found a decreased batting average on balls in play of about eight points when the shift was on.

Basically it concludes by saying that there are about 20 hitters that the shift can be effective on but that the threshold of using in todays game is way to low because of its adverse affects on the most important player on the defense.  

The threshold for when a shift should be used should be very high. It should be practiced only on those hitters with the most extreme pull tendencies. There should probably be a few thousand shifts per year, league wide, and they should all be against the same 20 or so guys.

Edited November 30, 2018 by BrassBulls12

[Bull94]

22 minutes ago, BrassBulls12 said:

This is just false so i am gonna leave that alone 

 

 He's not comparing it to itself he is comparing the number of shifts vs the league BABIP. It shows that an increase in shifts over the fours years also produced an increase in BABIP, not a decrease as it should have. Your reasoning is flawed, if the shift worked better than normal alignment, why would the BABIP stay the same? It wouldn't unless the shift has no affect. Except that didn't happen here. it increased. 

 

What my article said was... 

By focusing on BABIP, we missed the fact that the battle was already lost.

The point it is making is that the shift affects the how the pitcher pitches. 

Even though the shift is good at gobbling up ground balls and line drives, it has the secondary effect of making pitchers throw more pitches out of the strike zone. They don't appear to be pitching to the shift -- by throwing more pitches on the inner part of the plate, for instance -- but merely pitching away from contact, nibbling more and throwing fewer fastballs. This all means more balls. More balls mean more walks, and they also mean more hitter's counts, which means more doubles, more triples, more home runs and fewer strikeouts.

In other words, they don't want to be in the zone on the inner half because of the likelihood of a base hit with or without the shift, and they don't want to be in the zone on the outer half because of the likelihood they the hitter the other way and the lack of defenders there. So they nitpick more which causes more walks and hitters counts 

now it does say that there is a drop of BABIP on the shift.  One says a drop in 18 points against the 200 most shifted players. Which has the same flaws you so eloquently point out for Mr. Ripken The other looked at player who saw the shift sometimes and not others and it found a drop of........ a whopping 8 points. 

• Mike Petriello of MLB.com used Statcast data this spring to find that among the 200 most-shifted players, batting averages on balls in play dropped 18 points when the shift was on.

• And Russell Carleton of Baseball Prospectus, and the author of "The Shift: The Next Evolution In Baseball Thinking," looked at batters who had a lot of plate appearances without shifts, as well as some with shifts. For those batters, Carleton found a decreased batting average on balls in play of about eight points when the shift was on.

Basically it concludes by saying that there are about 20 hitters that the shift can be effective on but that the threshold of using in todays game is way to low because of its adverse affects on the most important player on the defense.  

The threshold for when a shift should be used should be very high. It should be practiced only on those hitters with the most extreme pull tendencies. There should probably be a few thousand shifts per year, league wide, and they should all be against the same 20 or so guys.

dude his "analysis" is garbage. all he did was compare BABIP (which is essentially like batting average) from year to year when the shift was on. Big deal if the number of shifts increased every year. that wouldn't tell you that the BABIP should go down because he only compared it to BABIP against the shift ON AVERAGE for each year.of course it will stay near the same. he is comparing the same thing on average in different years.

What he is saying is like saying that right handed hitters are just as effective against right handed pitchers as they are left handed and he will prove it by saying their batting average in 2013 is .296 against righties for 150 at bats, 2014 their average is .299 against righties in 300 at bats and it is .299 against righties in 500 at bats in 2015. you see their average went up every year so they must be better against righties.

what if the BABIP going without a shift was .330 in 2013? and the BABIP against the shift was .296 ? you see he doesn't compare going against the shift with going against no shift. He just says that the BABIP average doesn't go down each year against the shift. He is a moron and if you think that proves the point then I don't know what to tell you.If you don't understand this then maybe you need to take a data analysis class. God knows he didn't.

[BrassBulls12]

18 minutes ago, Bull94 said:

dude his "analysis" is garbage. all he did was compare BABIP (which is essentially like batting average) from year to year when the shift was on. Big deal if the number of shifts increased every year. that wouldn't tell you that the BABIP should go down because he only compared it to BABIP against the shift ON AVERAGE for each year.of course it will stay near the same. he is comparing the same thing on average in different years.

What he is saying is like saying that right handed hitters are just as effective against right handed pitchers as they are left handed and he will prove it by saying their batting average in 2013 is .296 against righties for 150 at bats, 2014 their average is .299 against righties in 300 at bats and it is .299 against righties in 500 at bats in 2015. you see their average went up every year so they must be better against righties.

what if the BABIP going without a shift was .330 in 2013? and the BABIP against the shift was .296 ? you see he doesn't compare going against the shift with going against no shift. He just says that the BABIP average doesn't go down each year against the shift. He is a moron and if you think that proves the point then I don't know what to tell you.If you don't understand this then maybe you need to take a data analysis class. God knows he didn't.

I think you are confused. 

The BABIP he shows isn't the BABIP against the shift only. Its the overall BABIP of the League. 

What he is saying is an increase of over 21,500 shifts had virtually no effect the leagues overall BABIP and that if anything it increased. 

For what its worth the league BABIP for 2017: .300, and for 2018: .296(woo hoo finally a decrease) and for 2012( the year before shifts became popular) .297

Edited November 30, 2018 by BrassBulls12

[puc86]

Wtf is this boring MLB broadcasters take on going for it on 4-1 or wtf does he have to do with going for it on 4-1? 

[BrassBulls12]

4 minutes ago, puc86 said:

 wtf does he have to do with going for it on 4-1? 

Nothing but if I get someone on this board to talk baseball I'm running with it. 

Edited November 30, 2018 by BrassBulls12

[NewEnglandBull]

This thread....

 

[Bull Nut]

This thread needs to get back on track... Pubsub anyone?

[OcalaBull2]

7 hours ago, chapelbull said:

Yeah, we could call something besides the up the middle run with the 5'5" RB .....

and that is just one example of the ultraconservative, play not to lose philosophy

This. Every time we were stuffed it was just straight up the gut. It’s the easiest offense to read. I guarantee one of those 4th and 1’s could have been converted if we tried running to the outside or even a quick pass.