[BWillie]

Originally Posted by Vladimir_Kyrilytch

How 'bout the Royals making headline news over on Fangraphs? They are the first and only team using a 2-man outfield with a 5-man infield. They are bringing their RF in real shallow, where the 2B would play in the shift era, then shifting the other two outfielders over to compensate. They've used it 19 times already, notably rolling it out against Joey Gallo. He hit a hard grounder right to the shifted-in MJ Melendez, but Melendez booted it LOL.

Here are the two tweets from Tom Tango, a well-known sabermetrician that apparently now has the title of MLB data architect.

This is the 2-OF configuration that the Royals are using https://t.co/lS97gpEt4T pic.twitter.com/cYISIa9Wnn

— Tangotiger (@tangotiger) April 9, 2023

The fangraphs article attempts to determine how optimal this is, but they wouldn't have the proprietary data that the Royals would, so it can only be a guess. No other team has used it at all and they would have the same data as the Royals though. Time will tell if the Royals have just started a whole new thing.

In any event, MJ Melendez best get to work on his groundball fielding! Perhaps soon, fielding hot grounders will be a main requirement of a RF.

Full article: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/the-royals-try-a-new-shift/

As cavernous as Kaufman is, this seems like one of the worst ball parks to do it in.