Advanced scouting reports alter outfield alignment against October power hitters, but they cannot account for every inch of a ballpark. Alex Verdugo learned that with his legs in the air at Dodger Stadium.
It was the bottom of the tenth on October 25, 2024. The Yankees led the Dodgers 3-2, with two runners aboard and one out. Nestor Cortes coaxed Shohei Ohtani into a foul pop down the left-field line. Verdugo sprinted toward the low wall, snatched the ball and tumbled headfirst into the stands. He made the catch. Because the ball went dead, both runners moved up a base.
Now first base stood open. Aaron Boone walked Mookie Betts intentionally, gambling on a lefty-lefty matchup with Freddie Freeman. Cortes threw a first-pitch fastball. Freeman hammered it 409 feet into the right-field pavilion, completing the first walk-off grand slam in World Series history.
The Yankees had just seen the best and worst possibilities of October defense in consecutive at-bats. A superb catch bought an out. A flawless swing made the alignment irrelevant. Between those extremes lies the quieter fight that scouting departments spend months preparing to win.
The extra base October defenses refuse to give up
Freeman’s grand slam was beyond the reach of any outfielder. Most hard-hit baseballs leave the defense with at least a chance, though, and teams have spent years reconsidering how to improve those odds.
Dodgers manager Dave Roberts explained that thinking during a March 2026 interview with the Associated Press. Earlier generations positioned outfielders closer to home plate to take away singles. Today’s defenders often start deeper because clubs prioritize preventing extra-base hits.
That approach has changed what happens to some of baseball’s hardest-hit balls.
Consider Nolan Arenado’s 111.4 mph line drive against Toronto’s José Berríos on May 23, 2022.
Arenado drilled the pitch over shortstop Bo Bichette’s head at Busch Stadium. The ball carried enough force to look like an easy double off the bat.
Instead, Blue Jays center fielder Bradley Zimmer cut it off and held Arenado to a single.
The play stayed with Arenado. Speaking to the AP in 2026, he recalled how a similar ball might have produced two bases earlier in his career.
The numbers support a broader change in offensive outcomes. Sportradar recorded 7,745 doubles and 628 triples across MLB in 2025. A decade earlier, in 2016, those totals reached 8,254 and 873.
Changes in hitting approaches and ballpark dimensions also influence those figures. Still, deeper defensive positioning has become an important part of the discussion.
For October power hitters, that means finding grass beyond the infield no longer guarantees extra bases.
A well-positioned center fielder can turn a 110 mph line drive into an ordinary single. The hitter did his job. The defense simply started in the right place.
Before the first pitch, scouts have already mapped the gaps
A postseason scouting meeting involves more than reviewing a hitter’s spray chart.
Advance scouts study where a batter sends hard contact against specific pitch types. They examine handedness, release points, pitch location, exit velocity and launch angle.
The questions become increasingly narrow.
Where does Aaron Judge drive elevated four-seam fastballs? Does Giancarlo Stanton produce a different contact pattern against sliders? How does Freddie Freeman attack an inside fastball when a left-handed reliever enters?
A staff cannot answer those questions reliably by looking at one season-long spray chart.
One pitching change can redraw the outfield
Imagine Judge facing a right-handed pitcher whose fastball runs toward the outer part of the plate.
The defensive staff must consider how Judge has attacked similar pitches. If the evidence points toward hard contact in right-center, the center fielder might move in that direction.
Now replace the starter with a reliever who attacks Judge inside. That earlier positioning recommendation may no longer make sense.
The hitter hasn’t changed. The anticipated contact has.
Scouts separate these matchups because pitch movement and location influence where a baseball leaves the bat. They also account for how a hitter’s swing produces different launch angles against different pitches.
For a power hitter, that matters enormously.
A ball launched at 30 degrees poses a different defensive problem from a screaming liner struck at 12 degrees. Moving everyone toward the warning track might protect against the first while creating space for the second.
The short porch and the warning-track gamble
An outfielder also needs to know exactly where the dangerous contact is likely to land.
Yankee Stadium’s right-field foul pole sits 314 feet from home plate. That short porch changes the calculation against left-handed power hitters.
A fly ball near the line may clear the fence before a right fielder has any chance to intervene. Playing unusually deep there offers little protection against a home run.
The right-center gap presents another problem. A defender must judge whether extra depth will prevent a double or simply leave too much grass open in front of him.
Wrigley Field brings different challenges. Its brick walls and ivy demand careful route selection, particularly when a fielder runs toward the warning track.
The scouting report should account for the stadium as carefully as the hitter.
Coaches aren’t searching for an arrangement that eliminates every hit. They want three starting positions that reduce the damage from the swings they expect most often.
The numbers miss the outfield adjustments nobody notices
MLB’s tracking data suggests teams have reduced their use of strategic outfield alignments.
Those arrangements appeared on nearly 10% of plate appearances in 2019, compared with fewer than 5% in 2022 and 2023.
But those figures don’t capture every adjustment.
Statcast allows corner outfielders to stand between 260 and 320 feet from home plate within its standard positioning boundaries. Center fielders have a standard depth range of 280 to 350 feet. That’s plenty of room to move without registering a strategic shift.
A defender can shade several steps toward the gap and still count as conventionally positioned.
The figures also don’t establish exactly why the recorded share declined. MLB’s 2023 shift restrictions eliminated four-outfielder setups created by moving an infielder onto the grass, but the drop had already begun in 2022.
Meanwhile, the three regular outfielders retained considerable freedom to move.
A center fielder can shade toward left-center. A right fielder can retreat a few steps, while his teammate moves closer to the line.
Most fans won’t notice those movements. The hitter might not, either.
Yet a defender who starts five feet closer to the eventual landing spot has five fewer feet to cover. In October, that small advantage can separate a diving catch from a ball rolling toward the wall.
Freddie Freeman was a scouting problem long before his October grand slam
Freeman’s 2024 World Series heroics provide an interesting connection to earlier defensive research.
In 2021, a study published by the Society for American Baseball Research examined how outfielders could improve their coverage through customized positioning.
The researchers developed an approach called Optimizing Precise Placement of Outfielders, or OPPO.
Their model combined individual hitters’ 2019 batted-ball locations with the range of specific outfielders. Instead of assuming that every player belonged in his conventional position, it searched for arrangements that placed defenders near the most vulnerable areas.
Freeman was among the hitters examined.
Using 242 outfield batted balls from his 2019 season, the researchers found that different customized alignments could improve the share of balls within reach.
The modeled improvement against Freeman ranged from 11.6 to 14.5 percentage points across the three tested outfields.
Those results did not represent additional outs recorded in actual games. The model measured potential coverage, and the researchers acknowledged that reaching a ball does not guarantee catching it.
Still, the findings illustrated something traditional defensive positioning could miss.
Freeman’s contact distribution placed enough baseballs in the gaps that repositioning defenders offered measurable theoretical benefits.
That makes his World Series grand slam an especially sharp example of scouting’s limits.
The research suggested ways to defend Freeman’s catchable contact more effectively. Years later, his first-pitch swing against Cortes produced a baseball no outfielder could reach.
Advanced scouting can help a defense win the most probable matchup. It cannot guarantee that a hitter will produce the contact the model anticipates.
Two center fielders faced the same impossible catch
Even perfect starting positions mean little if an outfielder reacts poorly.
Consider what happened when Pete Crow-Armstrong faced the Dodgers in April 2025.
Tommy Edman lined a baseball into center field. Crow-Armstrong moved immediately, tracked its flight and made a running catch without leaving his feet.
Nothing about the finish looked extraordinary.
The underlying numbers told another story.
Statcast calculated that Crow-Armstrong had 3.3 seconds to cover 52 feet. Major-league outfielders convert opportunities with those measurements into catches only about 10% of the time.
His initial jump covered more than 14 additional feet compared with the major-league average.
Crow-Armstrong had done the difficult work almost before viewers recognized the danger.
Same distance, same clock, different result
Two years earlier, Detroit’s Matt Vierling faced a remarkably similar opportunity during a May 2023 game against Pittsburgh.
Both center fielders started 326 feet from home plate.
Each needed to cover 52 feet in 3.3 seconds. The balls also required nearly identical running angles.
Vierling couldn’t reach his.
The comparison doesn’t mean he made a terrible play. His jump actually rated five feet better than the league average.
Crow-Armstrong simply reacted even faster and covered more ground in the correct direction.
MLB’s Statcast analysis used the two opportunities to demonstrate how much defensive success depends on the movement that happens immediately after pitch release.
For postseason scouting departments, the lesson is practical.
A positioning model cannot treat every center fielder as interchangeable.
An elite defender might cover a wider section of the gap even when he starts several feet away from the most likely landing spot. A slower teammate may need a more conservative alignment.
Teams must evaluate the actual players covering the grass, not just the hitter standing at home plate.
The best defensive arrangement puts each outfielder where his range can produce the greatest benefit.
When the bullpen door opens, the scouting plan changes
Postseason managers rarely allow a difficult matchup to continue simply because the starter has worked deep into the game.
A fresh reliever can change the outfield’s responsibilities immediately.
Suppose a right-handed starter has spent six innings attacking Stanton with breaking balls away. The defense has followed an alignment built around that pitch selection.
A left-handed reliever enters and begins challenging Stanton with fastballs. The original positioning card may now offer less value.
Scouts must account for the batter’s history against left-handed pitching, the reliever’s arsenal and the quality of contact those combinations have produced.
Sample size becomes another problem.
A hitter might have faced a particular reliever only a handful of times. Even a larger history against left-handed pitchers can conceal significant differences between pitch types.
That leaves coaches balancing several imperfect sources of information.
Sometimes the simplest instruction works best.
The center fielder shifts toward right-center. One corner outfielder protects the line while the other adjusts his depth.
Everyone needs to understand the plan before the pitcher comes set.
The fastball that ended the calculation
The Freeman-Cortes matchup illustrates how quickly a planned advantage can disappear.
Boone selected Cortes partly because he wanted the left-handed pitcher facing left-handed hitters.
Freeman had previously seen Cortes during the Dodgers’ June 2024 visit to Yankee Stadium.
That experience mattered. After the intentional walk to Betts, Freeman anticipated the possibility of an inside fastball.
Cortes delivered one on the first pitch.
Freeman connected at 109.2 mph, sending the baseball 409 feet into the right-field seats.
The pitch was not an outfield-positioning failure. It was a pitch the hitter recognized and punished.
A manager can arrange a favorable matchup. Scouts can identify patterns that might give the defense a better chance.
But once a dangerous hitter squares up a fastball with that kind of force, the outfielders become spectators.
October can come down to three steps in the grass
The next significant development in postseason outfield alignment may involve making smaller adjustments more accurately rather than creating increasingly unusual formations.
Scouting departments already have access to detailed contact distributions, pitch-tracking information and defensive range measurements.
The harder task involves deciding which information deserves attention.
One power hitter may show a strong pull tendency against fastballs. Another might distribute hard contact evenly across both gaps.
The same defensive recommendation won’t work equally well against both.
A club also needs to balance the benefits of extra depth against the risk of surrendering singles. That trade-off changes with the score, inning and baserunners.
With a runner on first and two outs, preventing a double into the gap could save the game. With the winning run on third and one out, a shallow fly ball presents a completely different calculation.
Outfielders must process those circumstances while preparing to react instantly.
Coaches can’t hand them twenty competing instructions during a tense postseason at-bat. They need a clear positioning plan and enough flexibility to respond when the matchup changes.
The best defenders combine preparation with instinct.
Crow-Armstrong’s running catch against Edman demonstrated how elite reactions can turn an unlikely opportunity into an out. Arenado’s 111.4 mph single showed how defensive depth can neutralize tremendous contact.
Those plays explain why advanced scouting reports alter outfield alignment against October power hitters.
Not every adjustment produces a highlight. Some prevent extra-base hits so quietly that nobody thinks about the defender’s starting position.
Back at Dodger Stadium in October 2024, Verdugo’s sprint ended with him disappearing over the left-field wall. Moments later, Freeman sent a baseball soaring beyond every Yankees defender.
One play demanded extraordinary athleticism. The other made defensive athleticism irrelevant.
Between those two outcomes sit thousands of decisions that never make a highlight reel.
A center fielder studies the hitter. He checks the positioning card, looks toward the dugout and moves several feet toward the gap.
The pitcher comes set. The crowd rises.
When the ball finally leaves the bat, those few steps may decide whether October continues or ends.
READ ALSO: How early runs turn Division Series bullpen plans upside down in October
FAQs
How do MLB teams decide where outfielders should stand?
Scouts study hitters’ spray charts, pitch types, launch angles and contact patterns. Coaches use that information to position outfielders where dangerous hits are most likely.
Why do outfielders play deeper against power hitters?
Deeper positioning helps defenders prevent doubles and triples. Teams sometimes accept more singles to stop hard-hit balls from reaching the wall.
Are outfield shifts still allowed in MLB?
Yes. MLB restricts certain infield shifts, but the three regular outfielders can still adjust their depth and direction based on the hitter.
How does Statcast help teams position their outfielders?
Statcast tracks contact direction, exit velocity, launch angle and defensive range. Teams use those measurements to identify areas where hitters could cause the most damage.
Can better outfield positioning stop a home run?
Not when the ball clears the fence. Good positioning helps defenders turn catchable balls into outs and prevent hard contact from becoming extra-base hits.
