Across baseball, home run rates are soaring, in part because batters are making a conscious effort to hit the ball in the air more often. From Josh Donaldson to Daniel Murphy to Justin Turner, many MLB stars have realized that good things happen when you hit fly balls.
And in this era of incessant shifting, defenses might soon adjust accordingly. In a column published Wednesday morning, ESPN’s Buster Olney writes that four-man outfields could be on the way.
Some evaluators have mulled the concept of using a four-man outfield under certain circumstances as a way of reducing the odds of big damage. More and more hitters and coaches have focused on developing swing mechanics of getting the ball in the air, and the addition of one more fielder to the outfield might be increasingly considered.
“The more that I think about it,” one evaluator said, “the more that I think it can make sense.”
Olney writes that such a shift would likely be used only for hitters with extreme fly ball tendencies and probably only in situations when a single is not particularly damaging, such as with two outs and nobody on base. Four-man outfields would be particularly useful for a team, like the Cubs, that have infielders who are comfortable in the outfield as well.
The four-man outfield might sound awfully radical, but in a way it’s not too crazy at all. A traditional extreme shift on a lefty more or less features four outfielders, with the second baseman playing deep into right field. And given that teams are willing to leave huge holes on the infield for those types of shifts, why wouldn’t they be open to doing the same for a four-outfielder alignment?
The concept of a four-man outfield fits with the general modern ethos in baseball of putting fielders where the batters are most likely to hit the ball. Currently, Major-League hitters are hitting the ball to the outfield, so maybe that’s where more fielders should be standing.
