How D-Backs rookie Alek Thomas is altering his approach in hopes of beating the shift

The highlight of Alek Thomas’ game Tuesday night came in the first at-bat of the bottom of the ninth. He got a breaking ball down and in, kept his swing plane true, put his barrel on the ball and lifted it over a leaping Ozzie Albies and into right field.

That’s one way to beat the shift — an invaluable one, given the rookie eventually came around to tie the game, setting the stage for Cooper Hummel’s 10th inning walk-off. It’s also incredibly difficult to repeat. “There's a lot of luck,” hitting coach Joe Mather admitted. With modern shifts, the gap between a second baseman and a right fielder is minuscule.

That’s why 80% of Thomas’ pregame work is focused on the other, more reliable method of beating the shift: Going the other way.

Three hours before his critical ninth-inning single, Thomas, who has now been in the majors for three and a half weeks, produced an at-bat that epitomized what the Diamondbacks are training him to do. He laid off two breaking balls inside — the type of pitch that’s easy to roll over to second base — and waited for a fastball away. Thomas couldn’t quite barrel the ball up, but he lifted an 88.2 mph line drive to left field at a 27- degree launch angle. A little bit harder or a few degrees lower and that’s the exact result the Diamondbacks are looking for with Thomas, whose OPS has dipped from .992 to .769 over the past 10 days with more and more teams employing shifts against him as he adjusts to major league pitching.

“That was one where he didn't roll,” Mather said. “Easily could've. But he let it get deep, put a good path on it, they just happened to play him over there.”

Against the shift, Thomas has a weighted on-base average — an all-encompassing offensive statistic — of .296. Without the shift, that number is .373. According to Fangraphs, .370 is classified as ‘great,’ while .290 is classified as ‘awful.’

Going the other way, though, isn’t as simple as it sounds. The natural way to hit to the opposite field is to push your hands out over the plate, forcing the ball in that direction. But according to Mather, that leads batters to drop the barrel, making the bat heavier and leading to swings-and-misses or lazy pop-ups.

The proper way to hit the other way is to back the ball up in your swing.

“That allows you to have a flatter path,” Mather said. “… If we can catch it deep in our swing, we're gonna be able to drive it.”

Read more: How the Diamondbacks use infielders' movement to identify pitches

That’s also a much more difficult concept. Typically, the Diamondbacks build players up to be able to back their swings up, first working with them off the tee, then with flips, then tosses, then off the pitching machine. Thomas is on the final step of that progression, hitting off the machine with higher velocity and more spin than he sees in games, training him to go the other way even on the most difficult pitches.

“That's all I do really in the cage,” Thomas said. “I think in the game, I'm just rolling over or something like that. Trying a little too hard and not sticking with my approach. So just stick with the approach more and those hits will come to left field for sure.”

Read more: D-Backs' Jordan Lawlar out with rib issue, expected back this season

Thomas’ natural power alley, he added, is to the left-center field gap. Indeed, seven of his eight extra-base hits this season have been the other way. In the minors, his ability to drive the ball that way forced teams to start playing him straight up, which then allows some of those pulled grounders to sneak through a traditionally aligned infield.

While he hasn’t repeated that success in the majors, he feels that he’s close. Much of the added difficulty at this level, though, comes with the command that pitchers have.

Against more erratic pitchers, Thomas can wait for a pitch away or over the middle and drive it to the other field — part of the reason the Diamondbacks have worked with him on his patience throughout his development in the minors. But some guys can spot three straight pitches on the inside corner.

Read more: D-Backs fans still lamenting Paul Goldschmidt trade

That’s when Thomas has to stay through on the ball and focus on hitting a line drive over the shift — as he did in the ninth inning Tuesday.

“You may not hit it on the barrel but it's gonna be a line drive somewhere,” Mather said. “Our brain wants us to get the barrel there. Everything in us wants to get the barrel there because it feels better, there's more damage, but that ends up being a rollover because we can't control the barrel as easily.”

Theo Mackie covers Arizona high school sports, the Arizona Diamondbacks and Phoenix Rising FC. He can be reached by email at theo.mackie@gannett.com and on Twitter @theo_mackie.