MLB Teams Bucking League-Wide Trends

New York Mets – No Shifts for You

Shifting in the infield has been arguably the fastest-spreading of these recent league-wide trends, with the year-to-year data on total team shifts on the past six years looking as steep as the toughest stretch on Mount Kilimanjaro.

What was once a rare sight – three infielders positioned all on one side of second base – is now a commonality, like the acceptance that we have come to as a society that the once-rare sight of sandals and socks is now common place among the youth of America. (Get off my lawn with those socks and sandals!) So far in 2017, teams have already shifted more than they did in all of 2011, and the league is on pace to shatter the previous record for total shifts once again.

One team that is passing on this new-fangled strategy, however, is the New York Mets. The Mets have shifted just 43 times in 2017, 13 fewer than the Cubs and Cardinals who are tied for second-fewest times shifted in the league. The Mets have shifted more than 200 times less than the league-leading Tampa Bay Rays, who have shifted an incredible 248 times already this season. (The Rays, as a team, are on pace to shift more than the entire league did in 2011.)

So how is this traditional defense treating the Mets? It’s a little hard to tell for a couple reasons. First of all, defensive metrics are the shakiest of all baseball metrics right now. Progress is being made on the defensive front, but pitching and hitting metrics are far more trustworthy at this point in time. Second, defensive stats, in part because of their overall weakness, take the longest time to become useful. Their “stabilization points,” so to speak, don’t arrive until much later in the season, even on a team-wide scale. Finally, the most logical way to determine whether shifts are having success or not – measuring opponent BABIP – has proven to not really be affected by the shift, for reasons not entirely clear right now. Yeah, defensive stats are tricky.

All that being said, if we go by the most basic of stats, the Mets have the fifth-best ERA in baseball this season. A lot of that run prevention has to do with their elite rotation, but it’s worth noting that their opponent BABIP (.293) isn’t far off the league average (.282). The Mets ERA minus FIP, a metric that can be telling for a poor defense, ranks just 11th in baseball, and by FanGraphs defensive metrics, they rank 21st – not great, but not at the bottom of the barrel, either.