DirkPiggler
Well-known member
Very good point and you may be onto something.
BA on pulled liners:
2023: .707
2022: .678
2021: .683
But also keeping in mind a lot of the stolen hits were on balls hit up the middle...
BA on pulled/middle liners:
2023: .669
2022: .640
2021: .646
BA on pulled/middle grounders:
2023: .213
2022: .214
2021: .214
So it looks like we might be seeing a ~25 point increase in BA on liners, while no real benefit to grounders.
We are getting into small sample size issues for a single player, but Olson hit 65 and 66 such balls in 2022 and 2021. Adding 25 points to his BA on those balls would add 1.65 hits, so this "dozens of extra hits" narrative is still outlandish.
I'd be curious to see these numbers exclusively for left-handed hitters. It seems like having the rover playing in shallow RF would be more of a detriment to lefties than having three IF on the left side for right-handers.
Teams are still going to shift as far as possible on ground balls. The off-side middle infielder will still likely play as close to the bag as allowed. For this reason the lack of difference on ground balls makes a lot of sense.
It also brings up the point that, if this is all the effect we're going to see from removing the shift, was it really worth teams' time to do it in the first place?