Rick Hahn loves to mention the 2021 Atlanta Braves' stunning second-half turnaround as a reason to not give up on the 2022 White Sox. In fact, he just did it again in Scott Merkin's latest newsletter.
During our 10-minute conversation, Hahn pointed to the Atlanta Braves, a franchise he often mentioned as a model during the rebuild – not only their path to the 2021 World Series championship but their run of 14 consecutive division titles from 1991 to 2005.
“Last year you saw an Atlanta team that scuffled for a good four-plus months,” Hahn said. “They wound up as the [third] seed, they were hot at the right time, and went on a run and won a championship.
Indeed, the Braves won the same amount of games in each half (44), even though the second half featured 17 fewer opportunities. When their divisional lead was whittled down to a half-game on Sept. 18, they finished the season going 12-2, including a three-game sweep that buried the Phillies for good.
However, the Braves didn't suddenly just realize their talent and click into place. They drastically increased their amount of defensive shifting, going from a team that never did it over the first two months of the season to a team that shifted half the time. The White Sox remained in the bottom five throughout the entire season.
The difference in defensive effectiveness between teams during the White Sox's four-game loss to Houston in the ALDS heightened the focus on this particular number, and Hahn said the number of shifts didn't determine the effectiveness of defensive alone.
And it turns out he's right, although not in the way he wanted.
These White Sox aren't just sitting back and hoping a Bravening happens to them. In fact, they're following the Atlanta playbook pretty closely in this regard.
Like last year's Braves, the White Sox have steadily cranked up the shifting dial over the course of the season, at least when dividing up Statcast's tracking of percentage of pitches thrown with a shifted defense.
As a result, they've shifted nearly twice as often this year (from 20.9 percent to 39.4 percent), and they've risen in the league rankings accordingly (27th to 10th).
There's just no evidence that it's working particularly well, or at least not enough to make an impact on season-long numbers.
Baseball Info Solutions, the company that Hahn cited for the data on raw shift totals and hits saved, released a leaderboard on runs saved by infield positioning via a post by Mark Simon. Despite a major surge in shifting, the White Sox are tied for the third-worst results in baseball with only seven runs saved.
Unfortunately, the SIS database isn't publicly searchable like Statcast's information is, so there's a risk in mashing together two data sets into one table when they may have slightly different definitions of what constitutes a shift. I'd imagine this gives you a general shape of the correlation, but we can revisit it at the end of the year if the two companies vary wildly.
| Team | Shift% | DRS-IP |
|---|---|---|
| Blue Jays | 54.7 | 16 |
| Dodgers | 53.1 | 32 |
| Astros | 49.4 | 24 |
| Mariners | 48.3 | 19 |
| Marlins | 45.3 | 14 |
| Twins | 44.1 | 14 |
| Mets | 43.4 | 12 |
| Cubs | 42.6 | 7 |
| Angels | 40.2 | 15 |
| White Sox | 39.4 | 7 |
Without the ability to track progress for DRS or related stats over the course of the season, I thought that maybe there might be some sort of shift in the BABIP allowed by White Sox pitchers. That, too, is a dead end, because May is the only outlier.
- April: .301
- May: .311
- June: .298
- July: .293
- August: .296
Last year's Sox pitchers ranged from .271 to .313 when divided monthly, and this year's White Sox hitter BABIPs have varied from .246 to .351, to get an idea of how wide the spectrum can get.
Anyway, when looking at batted balls that fit the bill -- base hits or errors against the White Sox while they're shifting, maximum launch angle of 10 degrees -- you get the expected variety pack of shift-conquering rockets, soft tappers, makeable-but-mishandled plays, and, yes, ordinary grounders through vacated spaces. The raw numbers don't tell you much, though, because it basically correlates with how much a team is shifting. There aren't major differences in percentages (probably because Aaron Bummer has been hurt most of the year), so it takes a lot more mining to distinguish teams.
Simon writes that the characteristics of the teams that fare the best in Defensive Runs Saved: Infield Positioning Edition have a reliable-to-excellent shortstop, and positioning can help make up shortfalls elsewhere. Well, DRS says the White Sox are getting the third-worst shortstop play in baseball this year (-12), and second base is the only position that isn't underwater. Josh Harrison is the only infield defender who has graded about above average this year and hoisted his position into good standing, and even then, he's biffed a number of plays this month.
(If you're wondering about Yoán Moncada, he's been above-average personally, but hasn't logged enough innings to overcome the damage Jake Burger inflicted. )
Last season, Moncada and Tim Anderson both turned in sturdy showings on the left side of the infield while playing the bulk of the year, which would explain why SIS says the White Sox got more out of their shifts last year, even though they barely shifted compared to this season.
Ideally, the White Sox would've been able to run last year's players with this year's strategy to get a stronger sense of whether the coaching staff indeed has the goods to put players in a better position. Unfortunately, this year's White Sox featured too much Burger at third, an Anderson hampered by a groin issue, and episodes of shaky hands for José Abreu, so it might be a wasted sample size on the whole.
That's not to say the rest of the season is a lost cause. For all we know, the addition of Elvis Andrus might give the White Sox the stablest infield they've had all year. With injury eliminating the other serious options, the infield is basically fixed with Moncada at third, Andrus at short, Harrison at second, and Abreu at first. Moncada was certainly in the right spot on Wednesday for what might be the most important defensive play of the season.
In fact, that play makes me feel slightly reluctant to publish this post now, as though I'm incapable of reading the room. Ultimately, it's still worth talking about, and it's possible to spin it in a more positive fashion, even swimming against cynical tides.
POINT: Here's some evidence that the White Sox are trying not to make the same mistake in consecutive years.
COUNTERPOINT: Maybe they're just rushing headlong into a different problem of their own creation?
POINT: OK, still, let's just pin the numbers where they are, because maybe this experienced and stable infield will produce better results the rest of the way.
COUNTERPOINT: What a great point.
It just requires some cooperation on the health front. As long as Anderson and Leury García are out, it's incumbent on the regulars to remain regulars. If the ranks are reduced to an infield with Burger and Lenyn Sosa leading the way on the left side, the world's finest spray charts and 1½ seconds of advance notice wouldn't be enough to close the gap.
