How on earth are there so many decent average-ish shortstops right now? Is it just a random thing, or maybe that with fewer balls in play the bar to handle SS is lower than ever? He's got a pretty decent projection but you can't find a team that's trying to win that could use him at short (Angels are maybe the closest).

His ZIPS projection is 1.8 WAR, which is 64th among guys who are listed at SS (players listed there, not necessarily expected to actually play there). That number would be 28th at 1B, 41st at 2B, 38th at 3B, 30th in LF, 34th in CF, 32nd in RF.

Glad to see him back on the South Side, where he shouldn't have too much trouble with playing time (I guess there's some chance that Romy Gonzalez's 2021 wasn't 100% fluke, but not enough of one to clear the decks for him). The Sox would of course be better off with Elvis at SS and Anderson at 2B, but not by enough to complain too loudly about. When they finish 82-80 and fall a game short of the Guardians for the division title, maybe I'll eat my words.

Do you suppose that more average defenders are only average because the shift has propped up their range artificially? Might we see far fewer of these so-called average defenders if some wash out when they have to play old school positions? I expect the impact will be limited except for those guys who really don't have the range at all, and most will be fine playing the same way other bat-first guys did in the olden days like Blauser and Jeter and so on. It'll be interesting to see how much actual difference the shift rules make. If a bunch of teams just start their middle infielders at the center line and have them slide back to shift positions then nothing will be different, but if no one does I wonder if the bar for SS and 2B defense will be raised.

Andrus is one of those guys who could sneak up to "if not HOF, at least someone to talk about". If he had a nice finish he could add another 500 hits and 6-8 WAR. Aren't too many 40 WAR, 2500 hit careers. He's already in the top 500 WAR and could get close to top 300. For hits he's already top 300 and could move close to top 100.

Andrus is one of those guys who could sneak up to "if not HOF, at least someone to talk about".

Haha. No.

One of my favorite players ever, but indeed, no. Closest complete careers to Andrus by OPS+ and PAs, ranked by dWAR ... the only HOFer is Mazeroski, and Andrus is not the Mazeroski of shortstops.

If you'd asked me offhand the most similar career, I would have said Royce Clayton. By BRef metrics Clayton was not quite as good a hitter, somewhat better as a defender – but they are similar: long-career glove men at SS.

Clayton was also never really a very good hitter at any point. Most of the guys on this list were, briefly; Templeton when young, White when old, Speier in his mid-20s, Andrus at ages 27-28. Then in April 2018, a pitch broke Andrus' elbow and he never really recovered as a hitter. But he may not have stayed an above-average hitter for long anyway; it's of course very common for guys to peak at 27-28.



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The shift ... The whole point of the shift was to move them to where balls were being hit. Forcing the ss to move back towards where fewer balls are hit isn't going to require greater defensive ability. Against lhb, the ss will be responsible for a bigger patch of grass but it's a patch where not many are hit.

Forcing the ss to move back towards where fewer balls are hit isn't going to require greater defensive ability.

Why not? Doesn't it take more defensive ability to field balls that aren't close to you?

Against lhb, the ss will be responsible for a bigger patch of grass but it's a patch where not many are hit.

I don't think there's anything in the rules against swapping your SS and 2B depending on the batter.

I don't think there's anything in the rules against swapping your SS and 2B depending on the batter.

Mid-inning swaps are explicitly outlawed in the new rules.

No mid inning swaps and no "running starts" during the windup to get into a shift position. Again, the biggest thing about the rule
Change is the "feet on the dirt rule". Geometry logic means that the range is cut down ALOT especially on the second base side but also at SS. If you played 2-3 ft onto the grass you've lost a lot of range no matter where you set up. There will be a lot more Texas leaguers now OR teams will have to move their OF in from the warning track which has become the OF set up du jour. That set up eliminated many double and triples. Teams will now have to make a decision on trade offs between outs that now become Texas leaguers and preventing extra base hits. I'm guessing they will bring the OF in. For pitchers, it's quite deflating to allow lots of cheap singles.

There will be a lot more Texas leaguers now OR teams will have to move their OF in from the warning track which has become the OF set up du jour.

Yea, there are no restrictions on OF shifts, I wonder how often, if ever, teams will use radical OF shifts, and if hitters try to take advantage of huge spaces in the OF due to those shifts.

If you'd asked me offhand the most similar career, I would have said Royce Clayton.

Without quantifying for the type of player, and instead just similar position, value and hits, I would go with Renteria. Get rid of Renteria's 2009 year and they are pretty much tied in value. Had nearly concurrent seasonal war (with Renteria leading most of the time) Renteria was a guy who had an outside chance of being hof conversation, if he could have played well enough in his late 30's.

top 10 war for each
Renteria Andrus
5.6----------5.4
4.3----------4.2
4.2----------4.0
4.1----------3.6
3.2----------3.4
2.2----------3.1 (approximate Andrus 2022 season)
2.1----------2.9
1.5----------1.8
1.4----------1.7
1.1----------1.5
1.1----------1.2
0.9----------0.8
0.9----------0.6

0.8/0.6----------(none for Andrus yet, and this isn't included in my final tally's)

32.6--------33.5(career---not including Renteria's 2009)
6.9(4.7)-----5.8 waa (not including Renteria's 2009)(parentheses includes 2009)
Renteria does better at the better years, Andrus picks it up in the middle in the end, neither of them by war look to be a hofer.

Renteria career ended his age 34 season, Andrus is going into his age 33 season, but just put up a 3 war season so probably has 3 seasons in him if he wants (where he'll at least get a minor league invite if he wants) Renteria 2327 hits to 1997 for Andrus(who has averaged 127 the last two seasons) so it's unlikely Andrus gets 2500 or more hits, it's unlikely he breaks 40 war, etc so he's in the hall of good, but with zero gold gloves and those offensive numbers he just doesn't have anything anyone could champion him for.

Interesting, fanboy – yes, Renteria was another of those players about whom people kept saying, but what if he gets a huge number of hits … except that kept getting less and less likely.

Andrus could hang on for a while, as you say, but this "move to second base" thing sounds ominous. It is usually the slide into utility status. Renteria (and Clayton too) were similar in that they hit OK for shortstops but not well enough to play other positions regularly, and so very rarely moved off SS. Andrus may not have much mileage left, especially in this era where, as JoeC notes, everybody seems to have a good shortstop.

edit to 12: when I said this

Had nearly concurrent seasonal war (with Renteria leading most of the time)

I had messed up on my original table and listed Andrus 2022 as two separate years(which would have meant the 2.2 was against the 2.9, the 2.1 and 1.5 against back to back 1.8 etc.)

I just wanted to clarify that my original beginning was based upon an incorrect table.

Why not? Doesn't it take more defensive ability to field balls that aren't close to you?

Sure ... unless they're so far away from you there's no hope. SSs weren't moved to reduce the range requirements, they were moved to put them where balls were being hit that they weren't previously getting to.

But the data's out there somewhere. How many plays did the "3B" make when the shift was on? How many plays did the SS make against LHB when the shift wasn't on? What proportion of RHB PAs were shifted?

I will say I keep forgetting about the "must be on the dirt" part.

Andrus had a season that mostly matched his best seasons last year. Moving to a contender helped. He might have some gas left in the tank.

Sure ... unless they're so far away from you there's no hope. SSs weren't moved to reduce the range requirements, they were moved to put them where balls were being hit that they weren't previously getting to.

Hello Walt. I dont disagree but I thought you were going to add that the problem with nasty nate's contention is that because there are less balls hit to SS by LHB then there is less oppurtunities to gain any sort of fielding advantage over the rest of the league's SSs. So if say 5% of LHB ABs results in GB to SS, and say a modern day Ozzie gets to perhaps 7% more than an average SS, we're talking .35% out of perhaps 100 GBs hit to SS by LHB.

So he's getting to less than one GB a season vs an average SS playing in the now mandated SS spot. Its a de minimis issue he's not going to lead the league in DRS by saving 0.3 OAAs. As you say the only reason they were shifted to the right side of the diamond is cause more GBs are hit there.

#17: Yes, that's built into it. However that was part of it in the pre-shift era. If today's SS have less range than traditional BECAUSE they need to cover less ground in the shift (as opposed to because teams/players have decided they'd rather their SS hit 20+ HRs a year rather than catch an extra 20 GBs) then getting rid of the shift would return whatever incentives led teams to have rangier SS in the pre-shift era.

By definition, given positioning, greater range means greater defensive value. Also pretty much by definition, that "return on range" in a total hits/runs/outs perspective is maximized when the player is positioned where lots of balls are hit.

But of course part of the shift strategy was to "overload" the area where the most balls were hit. But I don't know that it's possible to genuinely "overload" in baseball. We see discretionary plays in the OF all the time where two OFs could have pretty easily have made the play. Even with the shift, we really never see that on the IF (pop-ups aside) -- there are of course balls that sometimes the 3B can cut-off from the SS where maybe the SS would have gotten the guy out too; similarly we see the 1B sometimes cut off plays from the 2B; you never really see the SS take a ball the 2B would have made the out on, shifted or not.

Now the 2B shifting to short RF was a pretty radical change in positioning and I can see how that might have substantial impact on the return on different defensive skills (i.e. maybe less range, more arm, less often required to turn the DP). But the SS in the shift was just playing SS with a different starting point. If it was useful for him to cover X feet in either direction in his traditional spot in the pre-shift days, then it should have been as or more useful (more opportunities) for him to cover X feet in either direction in his shifted spot.

The thinking appears to be that teams decided that they could now use SSs that covered only (X - y) feet in either direction because, in their shifted positions, they'd still get to the same number of GBs because they'd get more opportunities. This allowed SS to bulk up. But that only holds if teams decided that the outs lost to (-y) were worth less than the runs generated by the bulk ... and given the impact of (-y) on the number of outs lost should be lower with no shift (due to less opportunity), I don't see why they wouldn't continue to make the same tradeoff.

Mixed in with all of that is decreasing contact rates and decreasing G/F ratios -- IF defense (in an absolute sense) must be less important than it used to be. So why not keep your Dave Winfield at SS?

EDIT: Does "overload" need clarification? Obviously the idea of the shift was to put 3 IFs where you used to have 2 because that's where more balls were hit so you'd convert more outs than you used to. But that's not "overload" per se. What I mean is that you put Ozzie in the shifted SS spot and Pokey Reese in the shifted 2B spot then the edge of Ozzie's range to his left and Pokey's range to his right don't overlap (on a standard GB at least). So if you tell Ozzie to bulk up and he loses some range, you give up more hits because the Ozzie-Pokey blind spot is bigger. It's theoretically possible that such a small percentage of GBs are hit into the Ozzie-Pokey blind spot that reduced range for Ozzie really doesn't matter ... but that would probably also be true now that Ozzie has to start on the other side of 2B.

that's interesting, need more time to digest all that.

do we have any sort of working guesstimate on how much the radical shift may have impacted perceived defensive factors? are there any infielders we think are prime candidates to have been overrated by range factors?

As for outfielders, I dont think we see discretionary fly balls "all the time." Looking at Ashburn's and A.Jones numbers they seem to be the ones most likely to have benefitted. If we assume max. range +20 or so OAAs, then they probably made about 20 more catches that weren't hard ie. discretionary. So less than one a week, maybe one every ten days? does that stack up with our perceptions?

HELL, even better question: How much do we think batting average will improve now that the shift is gone? Walt, you did an excellent study a few years back and my recollection is that it wasnt really impacting ba but rather slug. for good LHB was impacted some. But then later you seemed to go away from that. Isnt that the million dollar question as we enter 2023? I mean they all hated the shift, it was hurting batters especially line drive hitters and now...how much will it help?