Double plays and the shift

At one point in Tuesday's Twins-Astros game the Twins were in a shift against a right-handed hitter in a double-play situation and Dick Bremer started talking about the complexity this alignment posed for second baseman Jonathan Schoop. On a grounder to the left side, Bremer noted, Schoop would have to go away from the throw to serve as the pivotman.

To which Bert Blyleven replied with something along the lines of: That's why the shift is reducing the number of double plays.

Blyleven has not exactly established himself as a scholar of baseball stats, but this assertion seemed at once plausible (the specific alignment the Twins were in does figure to make turning two more complicated) and unlikely (in most double play situations, a shfiting team moderates the shift so that the second baseman or shortstop has easier access to the base). 

So I did a quick-and-dirty check on double play totals to see if there is any basis for Rik Aalbert's assertion, or if he's just making it up.

I looked at DP totals the past three seasons, as shifts became increasingly common, and at DP totals in 1999-2001, before the analytics revolution began to take hold.

2018: The Angels led the majors in double plays turned (173). The Yankees were last (95). And the average team turned 136.

2017: Padres, 177; Yankees, 102; average, 147

2016: Rangers. 190; Dodgers, 101, average, 144

2001: Royals, 204; Cubs, 113; average, 148

2000: Angels, 200; Red Sox, 120; average, 157

1999: Rays, 198; Expos 125; average, 156

This is hardly a comprehensive study, but it does suggest that indeed there are fewer double plays turned today than there were 15 to 20 years ago. 

But there are other factors in play than the the shift. Strikeouts are much more common; the percentage of outs that come without a ball put in play has never been so high. And hitters in recent seasons have largely focused on hitting the ball in the air; the obsession with launch angle may be playing itself out now, but it has certainly been a thing in the 2016-18 time frame.

My suspicion is that those have played a larger role in the bulk decline of double plays than have shifts. I'm confident that there are indeed fewer double plays turned today than there were when Tom Kelly was a manager. I doubt the shift is the reason.

Turning two: Twins killings

This is not a BIG thing. It's one of those little things.

Baseball announcers love to prattle about how important the little things are, and most of the time they are, to be blunt, wrong. "Productive outs" are just outs. You make a lot of productive outs, you make a lot of outs. The teams that make the most productive outs don't score the most runs, and they don't have particuarly good records in one-run games. A team gets 27 outs a game, and they are too valuable to squander.

But double plays aren't just outs. They're TWO outs. And some managers -- Casey Stengel and Gene Mauch, to name two fairly famous ones -- were very good at making the double play a big advantage.

Eduardo Escobar turns a double play earlier this month
against the Houston Astros.

On Monday morning I was poking around the Baseball Reference page for American League team stats, and I noticed that the Twins haven't grounded into a lot of double plays -- just 47 on the season. Only Seattle (among AL teams) has hit into fewer (42).

Defensively, the Twins have turned 64 double plays, which is a bit below the league average (67).

Still, this would appears to be an advantage of 17 double plays. I say "appear" because ... well, this stat isn't a zero-sum game. The offensive stat is, officially, "Grounded Into Double Play." It excludes the runner caught off base when a line drive is caught, or the baserunner thrown out trying to advance on a fly ball, or the ever-popular strike-em-out, throw-'em-out double play -- all of which are included in the defensive stat.

For the 30 MLB teams, there were 1,674 GIDP but 1,972 double plays -- almost 300 more double plays than double plays hit into. Thirty teams, nearly 300 extra defensive DPs -- call it 10. Each team should have 10 extra defensive double plays.

And of course they don't. The Twins, obviously, are +17. Tampa Bay, on the other hand, has 68 GDP on offense and just 38 DPs turned, -30. Which helps explain their sorry record so far this year. The Rays have hit into the fourth most double plays in the game and turned the fewest.

In the AL Central, the first-place Tigers have the biggest edge -- 55 GDP, 77 DP, +22. The Twins are next, followed closely by the White Sox ( 57, 73, +16). Cleveland is +8 and Kansas City is -13.

This is a complex topic, really. A basic truth about defensive double plays: Bad teams tend to turn more double plays than good teams, because they allow more base runners. Good offenses often ground into a lot of double plays, because they have more base runners. Last year the Twins led all of baseball in defensive double plays and hit into the second fewest. They were +75, but that said more about what was broken about the team than about something that was right.

The Twins are turning fewer DPs this year, and that's to their credit.

Twins killings: Turning the double play

Jamey Carroll, playing second base on Tuesday,
turns a first inning double play.

The Twins turned double plays in the first and second innings Tuesday night — and none after that, breaking a four-game streak with at least three double plays.

Those two DPs gave the Twins 70 double plays on the season — by far the most in baseball. (Toronto has the next highest total at 58, a dozen behind Minnesota.)

This is a mixed blessing — a multitude of double plays is characteristic of a team that allows too many baserunners, and this is certainly the case with the Twins.

But it also has links to some strengths. The Twins' opponents entered Tuesday hitting ground balls in 35 percent of their plate appearances —a high figure, just slightly behind Cleveland for highest in the AL. (This is fueled in large part by Scott Diamond; according to Baseball Reference, Diamond in his five starts has gotten 65 ground balls and 38 air balls.)

And there can be no serious question that getting Tsuyoshi Nishioka and Trevor Plouffe out of the middle of the infield (and Jamey Carroll and Brian Dozier into the middle infield) has helped tremendously.

Plouffe was a disaster at shortstop last year,  but he has been pretty decent in his first dozen or so games at third base — considerably better than I expected when he started playing there with Danny Valencia's demotion. He has been charged with two errors at third and has had a hand in seven double plays. It's a rare third baseman who has even as many DPs as errors — to have that kind of ratio is almost unheard of.

Valencia, in more than twice the playing time at third, had two errors and eight double plays — last year, 18 and 20. The contrast in around-the-horn double plays from 2011 to 2012 suggests that the improvement may have less to do with the third baseman than with the second baseman.

This just in: Ubaldo Jimenez is GOOD

Thursday afternoon, Ubaldo Jimenez (pictured) allowed one run to the Twins in eight innings. This slightly lowered his ERA to 1.15 from its previously lofty 1.16.

Jimenez's on-base percentage allowed is a sparce .272. What's more, it's effectively better than that because he's so efficient at removing those runners once they reach base.

On Thursday, for example, he

• got Danny Valencia to ground into a double play in the second inning
• got Denard Span to ground into a double play in the third inning
• got Jason Kubel to ground into a double play in the fourth inning
• picked Span off second base in the sixth inning
• got Joe Mauer to line into a double play in the eighth inning.

It's a perfect storm of double plays; the Twins lead baseball in GIDP anyway, and nobody in baseball has enticed more double play grounders than Jimenez (14), this despite the fact that few men reach base against him. He's also gotten seven caught stealing (five successful steal attempts), so he's cutting off the running game as well.

And, despite pitching his home games at altitude, he's allowed just three home runs.

Is he a realistic threat to challenge Bob Gibson's 1.12 ERA of 1968? Probably not. His batting average on balls in play is exceedingly low; he is prone to walks; and Coors Field, humidor or not, is still Coors Field. And 2010, despite all the great pitching lines, is not 1968.

But Jimenez could allow 30 earned runs without recording an out and still have an ERA below 3. That's astounding.