The Yankees are beating the shift in 2018

While the war between analytics and traditional practices in baseball will continue to rage on, it is safe to say that defensive shifts are here to stay. First used on Ted Williams in the 1940s and popularized in modern times by Joe Maddon’s Tampa Bay Rays, the use of the infield shift has gone up year after year in MLB, and is even being used in collegiate and high school ball now.

The goal of the infield shift is to better position the fielding team’s defense for a specific batter, based on the batter’s spray chart and batted ball tendencies. Most commonly used on powerful pull hitters, the New York Yankees were one of the teams most impacted by the shift, leading the league in shifts…