Question to baseball gurus: effectiveness of the shift with inconsistent pitch location

If what you’re trying to say is our defensive positioning with aggressive shifting is worthless when our pitchers miss their spots, then your point is correct.

The shift isn’t just projecting future results based upon historical spray chart. It’s reliant upon pitchers hitting their spots, which much of our staff has a difficult enough time getting it across the plate as it is.

I would agree that when our pitching staff is as inaccurate as it is, the defensive alignment should regress more toward a traditional mean. The aggressive shifting should only happen if and when a pitching staff shows its ability to throw the ball where it is intended (LSU’s clearly hasn’t).

We’re essentially putting the cart before the horse, applying analytics before becoming proficient at the basic fundamentals.

It’s a TD myth that Jays shift doesn’t work. In the Sunday game vs Aggie Milam threw runners out from 3rd, SS, 2nd, and shallow RT field

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but I don't think the calls for pitches are pitching to hit into anything (pop-up, into the shift, into a double play, or otherwise). Based off of what I have seen, that is MLB level shite and in college they are pitching for the SO. It looks like, with two outs, when a player gets on first, the wheels come off - it never looks like they are pitching with confidence in the defense. I think in college painting the edges and pitching with confidence is the name of the game

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Huh? That's a lot of words to not really say much of anything at all.

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I would assume that when we shift the infield to the pull side, the plan would be to pitch middle-in to encourage the batter to hit into the shift . (But maybe that is an inaccurate assumption)

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That is an inaccurate assumption. Pull heavy hitters are typically pull heavy hitters regardless of where the pitch is located and often times you want to avoid throwing middle in because that's what they're looking for.

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If the results are a net positive it's working.

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This. Its a poker tournament. You lose some hands along the way but if you win more than lose you gonna be ok.

Even that LSU isnt going to Omaha I dont thinm Jay would abandon the philosophy. I personally hate the shift when a slow ground ball goes right in the massive hole we didn't expect it to go. But I trust Jay considering he has more NC’s than any other active HC in the past decade.

In theory that’s how it should work. When I played college ball back in 1988-1992, we would get signaled the pitch by the infielders and I would adjust my position in the outfield based on it being a fastball or off speed pitch. I would frequently play left handed hitters in short left field because not many hitters had opposite field power. I would frequently be in position to catch those poked fly balls that would routinely drop behind third or short.