A guilty pleasure of mine is the film, Artie Lange’s Beer League. It’s more or less a love letter to all things New Jersey, featuring Artie Lange and a bunch of small time New Jersey losers who enjoy beer league softball in their town while going through the motions of their own mundane lives. It’s by no means good, but to someone who appreciates sophomoric humor, rec league softball, and one of the random things that Ralph Macchio actually performs in, the flick still holds a place in my well as a go-to for a cheap and reliable laugh.
One of the things in the film that I make references to almost regularly is The DeVanzo Shift, a defensive strategy employed by one of the antagonist teams, designed to feast on the fact that Artie Lange is completely incapable of hitting the ball to anywhere but the left side of the field, so the Manganelli Fitness team blatantly positions all fielders on the left, leaving the right side completely open. Naturally, being the underachiever he is, Artie still hits the ball into the teeth of the defense and is easily rendered out.
Throughout the last decade or so, Major League Baseball has gone in the direction of teams employing radical shifts, in order to capitalize on the tendency of more and more hitters to pull the ball more than anything else, because pulling = power, power = homers, and homers = $$$. It’s become laughably commonplace these days that every team’s left-handed power bats will see shifts where either a second baseman or a shortstop will position themselves pretty much in shallow right field, and be pitched in manners that will try to get them to hit it directly into the shifts.
Regardless, any team that shifts will almost always still have a guy or two position on the opposite side of the field, in the event that a hitter will drop a bunt to counter the shift, or some fluke of a swing slaps a ball to the opposite side of the field. After all, these are paid professionals who are supposedly the best in the world at baseball and should be able to read a defense and react accordingly to how the opposition is trying to play them. So shifts are not uncommon in the big leagues, but it’s like we’d ever see a real DeVanzo Shift in the majors.
That is, until Joey Gallo started playing baseball for the Texas Rangers. Apparently the book is pretty short and concise on Gallo: strikes out a ton, and if he makes contact with the ball, he’s pulling it. And the Houston Astros have clearly gotten the message, and have basically deployed the DeVanzo Shift, in Major League Baseball. The Astros positioned nearly every single fielder on the right side of the field, save for left fielder Marwin Gonzalez, who was the sole left-side safety net in the event that Gallo hit anything remotely to the left. Needless to say, the Astros were very confident that they were going to get Joey Gallo to hit a ball to the right side of the field.
Now if you’re someone who follows or knows a thing or two about baseball, this is where you think “shouldn’t Gallo just drop a bunt and basically get a free pass to first base” or something along the lines that there’s a stark difference between an acting beer leaguer like Artie Lange versus a major league professional baseball player like Joey Gallo. Surely, Gallo can see that the Astros are DeVanzo Shifting on him, and counter it with a simple bunt to the left side, right?
Nope.
Spoiler alert, but Gallo pulls a ground ball right into the teeth of the shift, and shortstop Carlos Correa, playing probably 50 feet away from where is normally positioned, is right there to corral the ball and throw it to first for the extremely easy out.
And this is where I wonder how Joey Gallo has a job. Because you’d think a Major League Baseball player would be remotely capable of dropping down a bunt or something to get the ball to go in the direction of left field, and get a free base hit out of it, right? I’m not going to suggest that every hitter should be capable of going the other way, because I know how hard it is to hit a ball to opposite field. But not being able to bunt? Sure, I get that bunts are not sexy, and bunts alone ≠ $$$, but in today’s data-driven and analysis-obsessed baseball, not making outs is always = $$$. I predict the ability to bunt to beat shifts will get a few minutes of fame as a one-off Moneyball tactic in the near future.
Regardless, baseball skills have become so tunnel-visioned and so linear these days that we’ve gotten to the point where the DeVanzo Shift has become a legitimate major league defensive strategy. The Pittsburgh Pirates emerged out of obscurity through shifting, and now we’ve got the defending World Series champion Houston Astros busting out full-blown DeVanzo Shifts in actual regular season games.
I can’t wait to watch the World Series one day, and in the championship clincher, seeing one team deploy the DeVanzo Shift on the opposition in the bottom of the 9th, against a power-hitting righty like an Aaron Judge-type of player, and the fate of the World Series really depends on if a guy can beat the DeVanzo Shift or not.
Whole right side of the field is open… go for it, bro.
