Matt Adams and Beating the Shift

Over at Viva El Birdos, SBNation’s Cardinal’s blog, author Craig Edwards has a great post on Matt Adams and the shift. In the piece, he notes that Adams hits almost all of his home runs to right field or right center, showing that his best way to beat the shift has been to just bash one over the fence. This season, things have started off a bit differently.

Edwards notes, using our splits data, that Adams has hit five ground balls this season, three of which went to the left side of the infield. In a quote with MLB.com, Adams stated “After my first at bat against Cueto, all pitches were away and there was nobody over at third base. It kind of surprised me a bit. But maybe their feeling was to throw it out there and try and get me to pull it. I’ve just got to stick with my approach and hit the ball where it was pitched.”

All good, right? Well, maybe for real life Matt Adams, but not for fantasy player Matt Adams. As an owner of Adams, I am glad that he is able to control the bat well enough to hit the ball to the opposite field. Even so, I would rather him be swinging it hard and shooting for extra base hits. As a fantasy first baseman, you need power, and for all of those that drafted Adams that is certainly what we are relying on. The early results and the early quote shows that he is more likely to take his knocks and try to go with the pitches outside to beat the shift rather than hit it over everyone.

Am I terribly concerned about my investment? No, but I am definitely going to be monitoring this for a while. Most of the opponents we have in fantasy probably aren’t going to be looking into this type of detail as much as we will.

This is just 28 plate appearances, and his line to date of .346/.393/.462 is nothing to complain about. Even so, a general alteration of his approach could be a cause for a drop in power. Maybe it’s a week’s worth of games and everything goes back to his .220 ISO ways of his debut season, or maybe he’s going to make a concerted effort to get on base more and shorten up his swing to beat the shift. The unfortunate side of fantasy is that sometimes what is good for real life may not necessarily be as good in this fantasy game that we play.