The tenure of Rob Manfred, MLB Commissioner, has now begun. Naturally, he’s pissing off baseball fans after just hours on the job, admitting to ESPN’s Karl Ravech that he’d be “open” to eliminating defensive shifts.
https://twitter.com/Joe_TOC/status/559382940812320769
So to improve offense in the game, Manfred would like to…get rid of shifting, which has become widely used and accepted across the game?
Yep. That’s the ticket. Instead of worrying about the strike zone, let’s focus on defensive shifts, which became popular through hundreds of hours of research. Let’s not worry about umpires calling balls strikes, which is forcing hitters to expand their strike zones. Let’s kill shifts! To hell with research and forward thinking! To hell with forcing hitters to adapt their game and go the other way! WE WANT OFFENSE AND WE’RE GOING TO PUNISH TEAMS THAT BOTHER SCOUTING THEIR OPPONENTS!
And guess what, Commissioner? If shifts are banned, teams are just going to find another way to exploit that ban. If you say that only two infielders can be on either side of the second base bag, what’s to stop a team from bringing in a versatile outfielder and playing him in a shifted role while moving an infielder into the outfield?
The wild thing abut this is that it doesn’t jive with the stats. In 2014, the league batting average on balls in play was .299. It’s generally hovered around the .300 mark for the last 20 years, topping out at .303 in 2007 and bottoming out at .293 in 2002. However, in the 30 years before 1994, the league BABIP was above .290 just once – in 1993, when it was .294. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, the league BABIP rose above .280 only twice, meaning that teams are converting *fewer* balls in play into outs now than they were during the “golden years”, even with these awful shifts creating a competitive disadvantage, or whatever.
Meanwhile, the league struck out more than 20% of the time for the first time *ever* in 2014, and hitters walked at their lowest rate since 1968. Where’s the real problem with the lack of offense here?
It’s funny – one of Manfred’s top priorities is “embracing technology”. And by banning shifts, he’d essentially be punishing teams that…have embraced technology and forward thinking. Cool.
