By conventional logic, the Toronto Blue Jays should not have been good at baseball over the last couple of seasons. They put flyball pitchers like JA Happ and Marco Estrada in Rogers Centre, where both pitchers have thrived. They built their lineup around hitters like Jose Bautista, Josh Donaldson, and Edwin Encarnacion, hitters who didn’t figure things out at the plate until their late 20’s.
What’s more, they have defied traditional hitting wisdom. In 2016, they had the fourth-highest Pull% in the league, with the fifth-highest flyball rate. If figures like that seem like a recipe for disaster against defensive shifts, it’s because they are.