Royals Rumblings - News for May 6, 2015
Chris Mosch of Baseball Prospectus writes about the new look approach for Mike Moustakas.
But of course, when considering whether or not to shift a player, we’re taking into account a subset of balls in play: specifically groundballs. If it’s true that Moustakas has become a master of beating the shift, then he should be hitting more grounders between second and third base, right?
Wrong. In fact, the reverse is happening. Moustakas’ ground ball rate on balls hit the opposite way have actually gone down this season, according to FanGraphs, with his groundball rate on balls hit up the middle basically hovering around his career norm.