Why the Blue Jays are the most shift-heavy team in baseball

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TORONTO — The Toronto Blue Jays are shifting their defenders more than any team in baseball this season and, really, it’s not even close.

After using the shift just 25 per cent of the time overall in 2021, slightly under the league average of 30.9 per cent, the Jays have employed the shift on an astronomical 70.9 per cent of at-bats through the first month of the season.

The shift is up all over baseball in 2022 — the league average is up five per cent to 36.9 per cent as the Jays and New York Yankees opened their three-game series at Rogers Centre on Monday — but it’s the way GM Ross Atkins’ club has steered more towards shifting right-handed hitters that has driven up the Jays’ shift percentage.

The Jays are shifting left-handed hitters, the norm over the last few years, 69.7 per cent of the time, which is about 12 per cent above league average.

But right-handed bats? Toronto defenders have shifted a staggering 71.5 per cent of the time against them, eclipsing the MLB average by nearly 50 per cent and well ahead of the next closest team shifting righties, the New York Mets at 59.4 per cent.

Only five teams in baseball are shifting against right-handed hitters more than a third of the time, and the Jays are well over two-thirds.

Add it all up and you see that some sort of philosophical change took place over the winter.

“I think it’s just the philosophy of ‘How can we be better?’ and then always thinking that way and making sure that before we institute a change or even become a little bit more aggressive with any type of deployment or strategy that we double, triple check it,” Atkins explained.

“We went through that process this off-season and revisited it subjectively, objectively spending a lot of