“It’s easy to beat the shift. Tell ‘em, Wash.” We know how that ends. The reality, though, is that hitting away from the shift, while not simple, is consummately doable and today Chris Herrmann put on a clinic.
Herrmann, a dead pull hitter according to your local spray charts, made mellifluous baseball music when with Robbie Grossman on the move he chopped a 3-2 pitch to the vacated shortstop spot. Earlier, Herrmann also gracefully served a Jose Berrios pitch into left-center for a game tying RBI single.
Both hits were not just “things of beauty,” they are a lost art in the TTO era of “grip it and rip it”.