Otto von Ballpark

And the first two Rockies outs that game were not strikeouts! So 17 of the next 19 were K’s...

AT&T TV streams BSN live.

Yes, the NBA/NHL games were rescheduled for the day too. But the original schedule had them in the evenings, and the Twins alone during the day. I know BSN has the plus channel but they probably prefer not to use where possible, as it splits their audience a bit. Sometimes it is unavoidable but if the Twins are willing to play during the day on Wild/Wolves game days, BSN probably won’t object.

I don’t know that game-level ratings data has ever been publicly disclosed for the regular season, but playoff games played earlier in the day are always lower than those of the evening game. The effect might be less for local regular season games, but I would expect the general principle would be the same.

To be fair to the league, it would be hard to push some of these changes directly into MLB without testing and studying them first. They might not help at all, they might be over-corrective, they might have unintended side effects, etc. And sure enough, the past several years have seen growing MLB partnerships (or takeovers) of previously mostly autonomous minor leagues, with new rules and conditions being introduced in those leagues for the explicit purpose of testing their effects and viability for MLB. If no effective changes make their way to MLB in 2-3 years, I will be disappointed, but right now the league seems to be on the right track in this regard.

As others have mentioned, infield fly wasn’t called. It was the intentional drop rule: https://www.closecallsports.com/2017/09/phillips-dp-attempt-reversed-by.html

In a vacuum, certainly night games are better than day games for the TV network. But as I mentioned upthread, while the NBA/NHL seasons overlap with MLB season, frankly BSN may not mind showing the Twins in the day, and Wild/Wolves at night, rather than having them compete with each other. And in a given week, if the Twins have at least 2 weekday day games, it's probably just as well for BSN that all of the weekday games are in the day that week, as it establishes a predictable pattern (for the week, at least). I think part of the struggle with weekday day game is that they are a bit unpredictable, and usually sandwiched between weekday evening games. Once we noticed the Twins and Red Sox played at 1 PM on Monday, we weren't as surprised by it on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday this week. Parents with kids in school are a pretty terrible demographic to target with 3+ hour daily broadcasts -- I'm guessing they have less time available than most other demographics. I'm guessing with full attendance, they may not do this again, but with limited attendance it seems like a reasonable decision.

But in order to punch that pitch to left, you have to identify the pitch, in less time than ever before due to record average velocity, and then change your swing to meet it. Oh, and record spin/break means you will be mis-identifying a lot of those too and probably missing them anyway. It might be a better bet just to take the pitch, if not taking your normal swing. I think that's where the "easier said than done" comes into play. Some guys can still do it in some situations, of course, but it's become increasingly difficult overall, as one would expect given the ever increasing velocity and movement of pitches.

Vaughn is off to a slow start at the plate (.136/.321/.227, .549 OPS in 28 PA) but did make this catch in LF yesterday: https://mlb-cuts-diamond.mlb.com/FORGE/2021/2021-04/15/b10cf549-a00cc51b-47ebc484-csvm-diamondx64-asset_1280x720_59_4000K.mp4 With Eloy Jiménez still out, Nick Williams cut, and Yermin Mercedes off to hot start at DH, it looks like Vaughn should get a chance as the White Sox primary LF for awhile.

It's a safe assumption that TV ratings are higher in the evenings, but you also have to consider that FSN (now BSN) also carries the Timberwolves and Wild, both of whom had evening games scheduled this week. The TV network may not have wanted to split the ratings by having additional concurrent night games? And once you have a few day games, it might be best to make them all day games. That avoids having a day game following a night game, likely captures the best April weather, and gives some predictability to the TV schedule. (I suspect isolated day games do worse in ratings than repeated day games.)

At first I thought it was a facetious comment about this year's attendance. But actually, if you look at our first midweek (non-opener) April games in the seasons leading up to 2020, there is no discernible difference between the day and night game attendance. https://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/MIN/2019-schedule-scores.shtml

Interesting! I did not know that. Here's a chart comparing first 2 months BABIP with rest of season BABIP -- it is consistently lower.

There isn't any such movement in that graph though? At least not until 2020 and 2021 which are still very small samples and prone to outliers and other factors. From 2004-2019, the low in that graph was .234, high .244, average .238. 2018 was .239 and 2019 was .237. Nothing statistically meaningful there. What might be meaningful is that every year 2016 and onward appears to have set a record low (a modern record low, anyway) for fewest ground balls in play. And also a record high in strikeout rate. I wonder if that is what you are noticing -- rather than shifts becoming more effective on ground balls, you're simply seeing fewer ground balls overall. Those extra strikeouts have come almost exclusively at the expense of ground balls in play too. Flies and liners have been stable for much longer than the rise in strikeouts, per Fangraphs. (And the big data quality issue for these numbers would be distinguishing between flies and liners, rather than groundballs.)

If you folks want to continue this discussion, I've split it into a thread here: http://twinsdaily.com/topic/50059-effects-of-the-shift/

I'd be curious if you could point me in that direction. Fangraphs splits on this only go back to 2002, and I'm not seeing that trend (outside of the 2020-2021 partial seasons): https://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=np&stats=bat&lg=all&qual=0&type=1&season=2021&month=17&season1=2002&ind=0&team=0,ss&rost=0&age=0&filter=&players=0&startdate=2002-01-01&enddate=2021-12-31&sort=1,d (I suspect the 2003 figure is inaccurate, as B-Ref has it at .239 that year. And 2002, B-Ref has the bug and only lists it at .151)

FWIW, here's Fangraphs BABIP splits for the last full season (2019) No Shift: .297 Traditional Shift: .296 (some variation of the Ted Williams Shift) Non-Traditional Shift: .333 I think we might be over-rating the efficacy of shifts a bit? https://www.fangraphs.com/leaders/splits-leaderboards?splitArr=81&splitArrPitch=&position=B&autoPt=false&splitTeams=false&statType=mlb&statgroup=2&startDate=2002-03-01&endDate=2021-04-15&players=&filter=&groupBy=season&sort=-1,1 Edit: Looking further, and limiting to non-pitchers, 2019 no-shift BABIP was .299; with shifts, it was .300. Basically unchanged from overall league non-pitcher BABIP dating back to 1993.

You might get a few more singles to fall in, but that's not really "action". Batters will still be swinging for the fences, K'ing 25% of the time, baserunners will still be largely station to station, and everyone will still be taking 30 seconds between every pitch. I agree that you can't simply ask batters to change their approach, but we have to ask, why are they taking this offensive approach? Frankly I think it's because physical evolution has made modern pitchers so overpowering, throwing with record velocity and movement. Many batters don't really stand much of a chance at being productive offensive players unless they sell out for the increasingly infrequent times they do make contact. And banning the shift doesn't do anything to address that -- it just puts a band-aid over one of the many effects of the modern batter-pitcher evolution. So what could address that? Something to counteract the modern pitcher -- a lower mound? Slightly different ball? Different and/or automated strike zone? A pitch clock and roster rules to help limit the parade of hard-throwing relievers? I'd rather see any of those things tried first, before I started restricting the natural freedom of defender positioning that has existed for all time. The problem isn't really the "Ted Williams shift" employed for various sluggers over the years -- it's that most modern batters are just variations of those sluggers now. I believe that if you can get the batter/pitcher ball-in-play/pace-of-play issue back in balance, shifting could be a really interesting element of the game again. It naturally lends itself to real-time strategic observation and discussion among fans, more than the accelerating arms race between spin rate and launch angle.

This was a discussion about the effects of defensive shifts in baseball, split from today's game thread. Feel free to join in below! Brock, sorry for my late reply. The current level of shifting is the product of there being fewer and fewer balls in play in the modern game -- less variety in batter-pitcher outcomes. Address the balls in play problem, and you likely won't be bothered by shifts anymore. You might even appreciate their creativity and strategy again -- it's harder to effectively shift when there are more and a greater variety of balls in play. I mean, look at the debates about when and how to shift -- it's interesting strategy to talk about! It just gets drowned out by all the K's. Otherwise, if you try to address shifting directly -- I'm just not sure what you really achieve, if anything. You're attacking the symptom but not the disease, and even if you get a few more hits to fall, ultimately it feels like a neutral/lateral move in terms of improving the game.

To be fair to batters, facing modern pitcher velocity/spin/break, it's probably the optimal strategy to load up their swings for power rather than to trying to beat the shift (or more generally avoid striking out). But like you say, limiting the shift does nothing to help that situation.

I like it. It's simply a natural strategy to play where they are most likely to hit the ball. It's not the shift's fault that batters care more about loading up their swings than beating the shift. If you want to see batters try to beat the shift more often, you could do something to limit the velocity/break of pitches and/or deaden the ball. Complaining about the shift itself seems mis-placed.

Actually, I just realized that Arraez is in LF today -- for some reason I thought he was in the infield. He also started in LF on opening day, which is what I meant in my earlier post. So, I quibbled correctly!

Oh yeah, I forgot that Cruz was sick for his day off too. That means we've given 5 days off total to healthy regulars, as far as I can tell -- and two of those (Kepler vs LHP) were for platoon reasons, one was for an extreme slumping Sano in a doubleheader. You also said "I would venture not too many teams are doing it" -- you're going to need to show some evidence if you want us to believe a single day off each for Sano, Simmons, and Arraez over 2 weeks represents some kind of extreme "resting", relative to the rest of the league.

Arraez was in the opening day lineup too, albeit in LF.

What healthy regulars have gotten days off (plural) so far? https://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/MIN/2021-lineups.shtml Kepler is the only one -- 2 days off, both against LHP. Cruz, Simmons, and Arraez look like they each got 1 day off. Sano got one of the games off in the doubleheader yesterday, but of course he has a 28 OPS+ right now too. The other absences -- Buxton, Donaldson, and Simmons now -- all look to be health-related, not just "coach's decision, did not play."

Cave is actually 5th on the team in PA right now. But it's primarily because either Buxton or Donaldson (and now Simmons) has been out for every game since opening day so far, plus Rooker struggled and got hurt and Kirilloff struggled too. It's not because they are resting a healthy productive regular every day. Arraez was supposed to be our "good" super-sub and he has more PA than Cave, it's just we've needed to dip further into our bench. If those starting opportunities remain open, for whatever reason, they probably have to think about giving them to someone other than Cave. I don't think Adrianza would be an upgrade. I think the Kirilloff look yesterday was about that possibility in the near future.