FanPost

Shifting Perspectives- Javy's 108 mph out

This past Wednesday against the Brewers, Javy ripped a ball up the middle in the bottom of the 6th inning while facing Taylor Williams, hitting a fastball 108mph right back through the box on a perfect swing. The score at the time was 7-2 and the Cubs went on to win this game 8-4, so maybe no one noticed or cared for very long, but for those who are infuriated or intrigued by "the shift," you probably remember the play vividly.

Javy is a guy who isn’t bested by the shift quite as much as guys like Rizzo, Schwarbs, or JHey because he’s not left-handed. However, Javy, and Willson especially, will often hit balls hard up the middle on the ground or on a line and there will be someone standing there, ready to play a ball that for 100 years has been a hit. Such was the case on Wednesday night, as I conveniently left that out of my recap of the play in the first paragraph. Javy did everything he was supposed to, hit a ball about as hard as you can hit it, and he ended up with nothing to show for it as Travis Shaw was barely able to corral it on a hop standing directly behind second base and then throw to first.

I often have a convoluted mix of emotions regarding the shift, and I suppose that’s exactly why it’s so confounding to a lot of people- there are emotions attached to something that is purely scientific and data-driven. Shifting is about analytics, projections, statistics, spray charts, and data. However, baseball fans are emotional beings, as we all know very well considering how some people were calling for David Bote to supplant Kris Bryant on Monday morning. What shifting has done is taken away the emotions and hunches and gut feelings of generations of ballplayers and supplanted all that with computers, graphs, charts, and data. As we have all read since the inception of this new wave of data, people feel differently about shifting. Some are proponents of shifting all the time and using data all the time. Some are still ‘old school’ in their approach and shift very little. (and some are Jayson Werth…) This causes myriad opinions and controversies amongst fans, players, former players, analysts, tv broadcasters, and just about everyone around the game.

I’m going to come right out and say that shifting makes sense. You have data that tells you generally where a player hits the ball and you position your players in the right spots to be able to field the ball where it will most likely be hit. I cannot sit here and say that it is stupid, garbage, based on nonsense, or makes zero sense. It DOES make sense, to almost everyone. That’s the scientific side of my brain. That’s what most fans can admit to when they turn their emotion switch off when it’s not the heat of the moment.

The emotional side of me is the side that has the problem. My 20 year old former player self is the side that has the problem. Javy had a good at bat during which he laid off a high hanging slider (Ball 1), looked at a fastball right down the middle (Strike 1), laid off a slider low and away (Ball 2), swung at a fastball up (Strike 2), laid off another slider low and away (Ball 3), and then hit a 96 mph fastball at the top of the zone on a 3-2 count right back up the middle. He did everything right. He did everything he was supposed to. He did what every coach and teammate advised me and every other player to do since we were 5 years old and barely able to pick up a bat. He did everything right and hit it where no defender should be, and you know what he got for it- he got a 108 mph 0-fer.

Sure, some of you are saying that you can hit the ball 108 mph at any point and it can be an out. You can hit one right to the SS or the CF, or a guy can make a great play by robbing a home run on a ball that was actually going to leave the park. The problem is, that has always happened. Great plays have always been made. Line drives right at guys have always happened. Players have gotten used to that growing up. I hit line drives at the SS in Little League and they were outs.

No one is used to hitting a ball to an area of the field where there shouldn’t be anyone standing and walking back to the dugout with nothing to show for it. No one employs shifts in Little League, HS baseball, or even college to any great extent. Even in the minors, minor shifting occurs, but it’s not on the level of major league scouting and statistical-driven shifting. Look down at the scorecard many of you keep during the game and note the numbers for the positions on the field. How many times do you see a ‘5’ in right field? How many times do you see a ‘4’ directly behind second base? We all know the answer. What we don’t have the answer to is what to do about shifting and what can be done about shifting.

The answer to the shifting question is one that somebody is going to be paid a lot of money to address and answer, if it’s even possible. What I do know is that you can’t tell defenders where they can and cannot stand and you can’t tell hitters to just "hit it the other way" when they’ve been programmed to do something that has worked since they started putting on spikes.

I think the best answer is what my dad always told me growing up on our car rides home when we would talk about the game. It was his reaction to how I played and what I did during the game that really mattered I suppose, that and secondarily my coaches who decided where I was going to hit in the lineup. He never cared about how many hits I had (although I’m sure he was happy when I had 3 or 4), because he understood the game of baseball. Baseball is a tough game that often mirrors life- a game where you aren’t always rewarded for doing things the right way and you’re not always punished for being terrible or doing everything wrong. My dad appreciated hitting curveballs back where they came from, punishing inside fastballs by pulling them through the hole, and using the other side of the field on balls away. He knew that if I hit 4 balls hard, it was a good day; regardless of how many hits it said I had in the scorebook. And you know what, I’m pretty sure that’s exactly the way Joe looks at it when Javy scorches one up the middle having done everything correctly.

"Javy, great swing man. Nothing else you can do there, babe…"

And, despite the emotion and logic that push and pull at all ballplayers and fans, sometimes that really is all you can do there and there doesn’t need to be any more said or analyzed. His teammates know he killed it, his coaches know it was a frozen rope, and he's still having a great year. It really was a great swing and Javy hit it hard. Hopefully, he’ll remember that one when he duckfarts one in where somebody was "supposed to be."

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