The Shift isn’t dead, but it’s limited, and that’s good news for the San Francisco Giants and their quest to build a cost effective lineup around Aaron Judge or some other big fish.
Joc Pederson had a tremendous year, but it’s reasonable to expect a negative regression to some sort of mean. Boy, a limit on defensive shifting might just cushion that particular fall. And what about Mike Yastrzemski, a hitter the Giants desperately need to produce for them? Well, it looks like he’d be helped out a decent amount, too.
Over on his blog, Patrick Brennan, a former analyst for the Phillies and Reds and writer at Beyond the Box Score (RIP), “exported every batted ball with a shift and without a shift in the Statcast-era, built separate xwOBAcon models that considered the EV, LA, and spray angle of each batted ball, and then compared” to generate a list of hitters most impacted by defensive shifting and argue who might most benefit from limits on that shifting.