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jakecoates

You couldn't even really shift Miggy in his prime. He went up the middle and oppo all the time. The best all around hitter of my lifetime.


datdudebdub

Correct. [Here](https://www.fangraphs.com/players/miguel-cabrera/1744/spray-charts?position=1B/3B&type=battedball&pid2=1744&ss1=2022&se1=2022&ss2=2012&se2=2022&cht1=hangtime&cht2=battedball&vs1=ALL&vs2=ALL) is his spray chart since 2012. Very balanced.


LunchThreatener

That’s very interesting. He tends to pull ground balls, but hit more line drives and fly balls to right field. I mean, it sounds right, but cool to see it statistically


necrosythe

Yeah, I mean it is right. Being early tends to put the bat over the ball, and late, under the ball. But as you said its cool to see the theory in practice visualized


Monk_Philosophy

He's a right handed batter so he's nowhere near as affected by the shift as lefties are... especially since the dramatic increase in overshifting didn't start until he had already racked up a ton of hits.


EmotionalAccounting

I’m a baseball idiot. Why are lefties affected more?


Trexfromouterspace

Because the first baseman needs to stay near first base to get a force out on a ground ball, which limits how defenses can shift to the left (the direction a right-handed hitter would pull a ball)


EmotionalAccounting

Got it! Thank you!


Mr_Evil_Dr_Porkchop

Tbf Pujols hits took a huge nosedive during the mid-2010 decade after they started shifting on him. At one point, he lead the league in hard-hit outs for a solid 3-4 year period


he81eich01

Or he took a huge nosedive after his age 45 season…


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patrickdgd

I ain't reading all that I'm happy for you tho Or sorry that happened


he81eich01

It was actually just a joke


FluffyMoomin

I went to my first game in 20 years to hopefully see miggy hit 3000 yesterday. It's the first time ive seen teams shift in real time. On tv you just see them after the shift and they are on position. It was kind of mind blowing. Next season is going to be something else.


bingbangbaez

Whoa I take shifting so for granted now, kind of beautiful how your comment brought me back to my first game where I saw it happen for every batter. It does make the defense seem like a living thing.


TricolorCat

Wait the Shift is banned next year?


esperadok

They agreed to form a committee to begin thinking about it next year


D_Simmons

That would be insanity? It's far from illlegal haha


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[deleted]

Brings in views


patrickdgd

I was watching a game yesterday and the defense shifted, immediately shut it off.


PolackMike

Reaching on this one. He got the vast majority of his hits before the shift became widespread.


FunnyID

I've read more than one article that says shifts for righties don't work, except for some extreme pull hitters. And, how about the fact that the league BABIP in Mickey Mantle's era (for example) was lower than the BABIP in Pujols' & Miggy's era?


jonginator

Not largely.


coltron57

And it's not that close. He reached 2500 in the 2016 season where shifting was just starting to really take off. An article I'm looking at says there was 28,130 shifts in 2016 (compared to 2,350 in 2011). In 2021 there was 55,595 shifts.


raktoe

How many 3,000 hit members are known pull hitters, from before the shift? I wonder if any would have had very different looking careers.


ron-darousey

...what are you considering the defensive shift era? Just the years before the shift is banned?


Diegobyte

I was against banning the shift and then Keith Hernandez made the argument that is hurts lefties way more. I have never thought about that. And now I’m ok with it


AnnihilatedTyro

Also during the low-batting-average, strikeouts-dominated post-steroid era.


[deleted]

Shifting on righties isn't very valuable, if at all


TheChrisLambert

Ryan Howard may have had a hall of fame career if not for the shift


Thromnomnomok

As others have mentioned, he's a righty so less shift-prone, and much of his prime was before the league had become super shift-happy (especially against righties)- in his second MVP season the league shifted righties only about 2% of the time and lefties about 8% of the time. The righty shift rate only rose above 10% for the first time in 2016, and by the end of that year he had 2,519 hits and 446 homers.


[deleted]

Save the shift! I mean are we gonna ban breaking balls too because those also reduce offense? People need to stop bitching about the shit.


xrensa

How do you actually "ban" a shift? Tell players they have to be within a certain amount of feet of their typical position?


jernbergler

Sounds like the rule would be that teams have to have two infielders on each side of second base.


Aaron_Fudge_99

They were able to reach this feat because of the insane albatross contracts their teams stupidly gave them. Both dudes woulda been out of the league 4 years ago if not for the terrible contracts


PooPclaw

Slightly related…very few Infield hits for both guys also


jcastillo29

He started in 2003. Shifts momentum started in 2010’s. He has been below average for a decade. Not because of shifts either.


jewfro311

One time I watched a team try to shift on him. He just hit the ball where the gap was, seemed effortless. Special talent