Grichuk forced to adjust against massive shift increase

The book is out on Randal Grichuk, and teams are finally adjusting.

Perhaps you’re immediately thinking that Grichuk is seeing more sliders, and that’s true — his slider rate has gone from 19 percent last year to 25 percent so far this season, a change so effective that it took Grichuk out of the lineup for two days earlier this month to work on pitch recognition (which seems to be working).

That’s hardly it, though. In Grichuk’s first full big league season, he benefited from the fact that despite Major League Baseball setting another record for most shifts used (nearly 18,000, according to Bill James Online), teams just about never put a shift in place against him. For most right-handed hitters, that might not have been a big deal. For Grichuk, he proved himself to be baseball’s most extreme righty pull hitter, at least on grounders.

Pull percentage on ground balls, right-handed hitters, 2015 1. 83.5 percent — Grichuk 2. 80.9 percent — Brian Dozier 3. 80 percent — Scott Van Slyke 4. 77.2 percent — J.D. Martinez 5. 76.3 percent — Andrew McCutchen

But despite that, opposing defenses didn’t do much to react. Last year, when Grichuk put the ball in play, teams were shifted against him only 15 times. So far this year, that’s already up to 17 times in far fewer plate appearances, making for a pretty massive difference:

2014 80 …

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