Add the Cardinals to the list of teams who will begin to employ the shift during the 2014 season, according to Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. General Manager John Mozeliak tells Goold that the first step in the process will be getting players to "buy in" at the minor league level before implementing shifts wholesale with the big club.
Cardinals planning a shift in defensive strategy
As more and more teams start to make use of the shift, the St. Louis Cardinals are working to implement it throughout their organization.
Dilip Vishwanat
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Goold says that shifting is coming to the major league level but that there was resistance in the past and Mozeliak is after “complete organizational acceptance.“
Resistance to the shift isn't only an issue in St. Louis, however. In the past, a number of teams, including the Tigers, have allowed their pitchers to decide on shifts, but the usage and reaction have been mixed. Jim Leyland famously riffed on the usage last season (Warning: Full link is very unsafe for work, children, and pretty much everyone else):
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There was some confusion to start with. I’m not a big shift guy. Some teams are and that’s why I don’t buy it, because you can’t have it both ways. You want to do it or not? Doug saw that he was shifted on the bunt the first time up, so if he wanted to move them he should have moved them.
--snip--
When it goes where someone would have been if they hadn’t shifted, well, they shifted. You can’t have it both ways. I think I’m pretty good. I can’t be over there at that desk and be over here on the couch.
While the shift remains controversial in some circles, teams like the Rays and the Pirates have used them to great effect. In fact, the Pirates were able to turn in their first winning season in two decades in part because they gave their ground ball pitchers a big advantage by employing the shift significantly more often than ever before.
Additionally, a number of teams including the Tigers and Angels are adding coaches to their staffs in 2014 that will focus primarily on defensive positioning and strategy. While many in and out of baseball have yet to warm to the idea of modified defensive alignments, even teams without sabermetrically friendly front offices are starting to incorporate shifts into their overall game plan.
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