The path to winning the World Series begins this week in training camps in Arizona and Florida. When it comes to offensive baseball, that path is found in one place: in the air.
The ban on defensive shifts and the limit on positioning depth of infielders have opened the field for more ground ball hits—just not nearly as many as you think.
Teams know the work begins now on getting the ball in the air, with a preference for line drives. No team faces a more important spring in that endeavor than the New York Yankees, the worst hitting ground ball team last year that is banking on bounceback years from several veterans when it comes to keeping the ball off the ground.
How important is keeping the ball off the ground? The past five World Series champions ranked among the five teams that hit the fewest ground balls, according to FanGraphs:
Most league-wide offensive numbers went down last season. Hits per team per game fell from 8.4 to 8.2, the fifth straight year it has not reached 8.5, the first such paucity since the mound was lowered in 1969.
With fewer hits to be had, home runs decide games more than ever. Hitting fewer ground balls is another way of saying “hit more balls in the air” in pursuit of those home runs. Teams chase slug, not batting average. The most popular mantra over the past decade has been “Slug is in the air.”
Nobody understands and executes this concept better than the Los Angeles Dodgers, the best team in baseball over that decade. Since hitting coach Robert Van Scoyoc joined the team in 2019, it has finished first or third in lowest ground ball rate six consecutive seasons:
Mookie Betts is a good example of the many Dodgers who train to get the ball in the air. He has learned to keep the palm of his top hand driving through the ball facing up rather than turning it over in the old-school style of rolling the wrists. Betts set a career low in ground ball rate in 2023 and went even lower in ’24. Despite moving to a less hitter-friendly home park, Betts has become a better slugger with the Dodgers than he was with the Boston Red Sox, which means hitting fewer balls on the ground:
You can see the differences here in setup (hands and bat higher) and finish (greater extension, less wrist roll) on fastballs down the middle in 2016 with Boston and last year with Los Angeles:
Baseball purists wanted to believe that the ban on shifts and keeping infielders off the outfield grass would encourage and reward more contact hitting, which includes hitting the ball on the ground. Indeed, the rule changes that began in 2023 have helped add more offense. Here are statistics on ground balls hit in two seasons with the rule changes compared to the previous two seasons:
The increase in batting average on ground balls is a nice bump, but it has not changed how baseball is played. Look at the rate of ground balls hit—it has gone down despite the field opening up. And the increase in ground ball hits is so negligible it equates to one extra ground ball base hit every 15.8 team games.
Nobody wants to hit the ball on the ground—at least since Ichiro Suzuki retired—which is why an increasing ground ball rate is a sign of trouble. For example, take Dansby Swanson, 31, and George Springer, 35, two former All-Stars on contracts worth $177 million and $150 million, respectively. They are going to have to find a way this spring to hit fewer ground balls. Swanson, for the past three years, and Springer, for four years, have seen their OPS decline in annual lockstep with an increase in ground ball rate:
The Milwaukee Brewers won 93 games and a division title last season with the third-highest ground ball rate (45.4%). Because the Brewers were also among the youngest and fastest teams, they led the majors in batting average on ground balls (.278). But that’s a difficult way to win a championship. With all those ground balls, the Brewers were 16th in home runs.
Likewise, the Arizona Diamondbacks were the highest-scoring team in baseball while hitting a ton of ground balls (26th). Ground balls don’t completely kill an offense; they do make it harder to win a title.
Older and slower, the Yankees were the inverse of the Brewers. Not only did they hit too many ground balls (they ranked 23rd), but they also had the worst batting average on ground balls (.225). The power of Aaron Judge and Juan Soto carried their offense.
This spring, one of the foremost priorities of hitting coach James Rowson and his staff is to help former All-Stars Cody Bellinger, 29, DJ LeMahieu, 36, and Paul Goldschmidt, 37, keep the ball off the ground more. All are trending in the wrong direction:
Bellinger is a fascinating case study as he trades Wrigley Field as his home park for Yankee Stadium. Wrigley last season played enormously large because of outlier wind and temperature patterns. Internal research by his agent, Scott Boras, found that Bellinger was more affected negatively by wind patterns than any other hitter, losing seven to eight home runs. While Bellinger has become a better two-strike hitter while cutting down on his swing, the Yankees are going to want to see more pull-side power in the air from Bellinger to take advantage of the stadium. Bellinger’s lowest ground ball rate in a qualified season was 32.3%—in his MVP season of 2019. New York would love to see him get near that number again.
Both LeMahieu and Goldschmidt are coming off the highest ground ball rates of their careers—and worst seasons.
When the Yankees reached the 2024 World Series, they were doomed by fundamentally flawed baseball more than anything else. Their flaws did not show up in most counting stats. They outhomered the Dodgers, drew more walks and struck out less (though timely home runs by Freddie Freeman and Teoscar Hernández turned games in the Dodgers’ favor). But the tale of ground balls also informed the outcome:
Baseball is a better, more aesthetic game without three infielders on one side of the diamond and five or six fielders planted in the outfield grass. Rule changes or no rule changes, in the toughest era to get a hit in more than half a century, winning baseball is still about keeping the ball off the ground.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Banning the Shift Has Not Changed How Baseball Is Played.