The Tampa Bay Rays were perennial cellar dwellers in the American League East until they abruptly jumped from a 66-win season in 2007 to a 97-win season in 2008, finished first in the East, and won the AL pennant. That run plus the half-decade of success that followed was sure to inspire imitation from other teams. Few had expected the Rays to get good, and while excellent player development drove much of their newfound success, some of their then-radical strategies became emblematic of the team's rise to prominence, especially the defensive shift.
As premier free agents always seem to find their way to cities like New York, Boston, and Los Angeles, smaller-market teams needed every extra run they can score or save. Shifting was an exciting new way to bridge some of their payroll disparity.
Eight years later, shifting is no longer a niche strategy. When Baseball Info Solutions (BIS) started to track defensive shifts in 2010, the Rays were the only team that used more than 200 in a season. This season, the team with the fewest shifts -- the Marlins -- is on pace to shift more than 300 times. Each season, a handful of new teams bought into shifting, and the growth of shifts has not plateaued. This season, teams are on pace for 30,000 shifts, which would be a 69 percent increase from 2015.
More than just new teams shifting the same players, the shift-leading teams have started to shift different types of hitters. We have all seen enough of the shift against David Ortiz and Ryan Howard to believe in its effectiveness, but can shifting really help against the right-handed hitters and non-power-hitting lefties that are now being shifted? Or is it possible that shifting has gone too far?