Boston Red Sox

MLB Teams Bucking League-Wide Trends

Updated Mar. 4, 2020 9:09 p.m. ET

Fansided, Jim Turvey/FanSided via Call to the Pen

Mitch Stringer-USA TODAY Sports

MLB has been in an interesting place over the past few years. The growth of statistical data has been exponential, with new and (hopefully) improved metrics hitting the open market each and every season.

One has to imagine the proprietary data that MLB teams make sure to keep private is even more advanced and potentially nuanced.

With this wealth of data, league-wide trends seem to be headed further and further to extremes. Nearly every team is telling their hitters to sell out for power and their pitchers to go hard after hitters to get the strikeout. Starting pitchers are being pulled earlier in games than ever before and defenses are being moved around before seemingly every at bat.

The league as a whole looks vastly different than not only the 1980s, but even 2010. With the vast majority of these changes, the results have been positive and so the league has shifted (no pun intended) to mimic these new tendencies.

However, we all know history is cyclical and, to quote Meredith Grey, "just when we think we figured things out, the universe throws us a curveball" or maybe, in this case, a heavy sinker. So which teams are bucking the league-wide trends in 2017? Which teams are going for contact over power? Which teams are running the bases like it's the 1980s all over again?

Let's take a look at some of those teams, with the necessary caveat that it is still early in the 2017 season, and some of this "rogue nature" of raging against the machine might simply be noise from a 20-game sample to start the year. We'll also check to see whether these teams are having any success by going against the grain.

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Tampa Bay Rays – We Don't Need No Stinkin' Strikeouts

The league-wide strikeout rate has increased in each of the past 13 seasons. Over that time, the league-wide ERA has gone from 4.32 to 3.91. While the decrease in ERA has not been a perfect trend downwards (last season saw a bounce-back to a 4.19 ERA), there is a belief in baseball right now that the best thing a pitcher can do for himself is get strikeouts. If you are a pitcher for the Blue Jays you might rely on getting pop ups, and if you're CC Sabathia you might rely on getting soft contact, but the safest way to get an out is to get the strikeout and remove fielders from the equation all together.

As such, it's strange to see the Rays sporting a mid-2000s-esque 6.86 strikeout per nine rate so far in 2017. The Rays are the only team in baseball striking out less than seven batters per nine innings this season, a "feat" no team achieved in 2016. What's most interesting about the 2017 Rays allergy to strikeouts is that the team finished eighth in the league in strikeout rate in 2016, coming in at a far more modern 8.56 strikeouts per nine.

The biggest culprit this season has been the bullpen. While the rotation averages a run-of-the-mill 7.47 K/9 (17th in MLB), the bullpen is a throwback, totaling just 5.88 K/9. The second-lowest K/9 among relievers this season belongs to the Pirates at 7.35 K/9 – that's a massive gap.

It is among relievers where strikeout rates have truly shot through the roof in recent seasons, as teams load up on big arms who can give it their all for a few batters before moving on to the next big arm to do the same. The Rays have veered away from that model in 2017, with not a single reliever averaging more than a strikeout an inning.

Right now the Rays bullpen ERA (3.74) ranks right in the middle of the pack (16th in MLB), but they appear to be getting a bit lucky on their opponent BABIP and home run rate. Bullpen sample sizes are always small, especially this early in the season, so it will be interesting to see if the Rays keep up this trend and relative success.

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New York Mets – No Shifts for You

Shifting in the infield has been arguably the fastest-spreading of these recent league-wide trends, with the year-to-year data on total team shifts on the past six years looking as steep as the toughest stretch on Mount Kilimanjaro.

What was once a rare sight – three infielders positioned all on one side of second base – is now a commonality, like the acceptance that we have come to as a society that the once-rare sight of sandals and socks is now common place among the youth of America. (Get off my lawn with those socks and sandals!) So far in 2017, teams have already shifted more than they did in all of 2011, and the league is on pace to shatter the previous record for total shifts once again.

One team that is passing on this new-fangled strategy, however, is the New York Mets. The Mets have shifted just 43 times in 2017, 13 fewer than the Cubs and Cardinals who are tied for second-fewest times shifted in the league. The Mets have shifted more than 200 times less than the league-leading Tampa Bay Rays, who have shifted an incredible 248 times already this season. (The Rays, as a team, are on pace to shift more than the entire league did in 2011.)

So how is this traditional defense treating the Mets? It's a little hard to tell for a couple reasons. First of all, defensive metrics are the shakiest of all baseball metrics right now. Progress is being made on the defensive front, but pitching and hitting metrics are far more trustworthy at this point in time. Second, defensive stats, in part because of their overall weakness, take the longest time to become useful. Their "stabilization points," so to speak, don't arrive until much later in the season, even on a team-wide scale. Finally, the most logical way to determine whether shifts are having success or not – measuring opponent BABIP – has proven to not really be affected by the shift, for reasons not entirely clear right now. Yeah, defensive stats are tricky.

All that being said, if we go by the most basic of stats, the Mets have the fifth-best ERA in baseball this season. A lot of that run prevention has to do with their elite rotation, but it's worth noting that their opponent BABIP (.293) isn't far off the league average (.282). The Mets ERA minus FIP, a metric that can be telling for a poor defense, ranks just 11th in baseball, and by FanGraphs defensive metrics, they rank 21st – not great, but not at the bottom of the barrel, either.

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Cincinnati Reds – Stealing Your Heart

One of the trends that has been in the more slow-and-steady mold over past seasons is the decline of the stolen base. Over the past 40 seasons, the two lowest season totals for league-wide stolen bases (excluding the strike-shortened 1981 and 1994 seasons) have been 2015 and 2016. Once managers (and maybe front office folks leaning on managers) realized the cost of being caught stealing teams began to attempt fewer steals. (They really could've just listened to Jane's Addiction about 25 years ago.)

Through that modern lens, the 2017 Reds look like a 1980s throwback. The team has 20 steals already this season, enough to lead the league by a 15 percent margin, and that total is more already greater than the entire 2016 Baltimore Orioles had.

Now for the Reds, this is due in large part to their personnel. In Billy Hamilton and Jose Peraza, the team has two of the fastest players in the league, and, unsurprisingly, those two have combined for 15 of the team's 20 steals this season. It's fair to say that without those two, the Reds would look a lot more like the rest of the league, cautious in their attempted steals and relying more on power than speed to propel their offense.

The Reds certainly won't be complaining about their speedy duo, however, as Hamilton and Peraza have combined to be caught stealing just once, and given the fact that both hitters are hitting below their projected rate, those stolen base numbers may actually increase once those two start to reach base at a higher clip as the season goes along.

Of all the trends so far, this is the most personnel-based, and therefore, we can't read too much into whether a counter-revolution is taking place. This next team, on the other hand…

Greg M. Cooper-USA TODAY Sports

Boston Red Sox – Contact High

Before the 2017 season, many pundits were predicting the Boston Red Sox lineup to be among the best in baseball. So far in 2017, they have lived up to the hype for the most part, with their wRC+ of 104 landing them in the top ten in baseball.

However, they are doing it a bit differently than many would have thought.

For years, the Sox lineup has been described with words like "powerful" and "home-run heavy." The Sox finished ninth in baseball with 208 home runs in 2016 and their slugging percentage (.461) was the best in all of baseball. They boasted a lineup that put fear into opposing pitchers and they played to their home-run-friendly home stadium with a lineup full of big boppers.

What a difference David Ortiz makes, huh?

So far in 2017, the Red Sox have the lowest strikeout rate, highest contact rate, and lowest home run to fly ball rate in all of the major leagues.