Change one rule only — institute an MLB pitch clock and watch what happens
Major League Baseball, sometimes referred to as ‘America’s Pastime’ has some problems. Declining fan interest and an aging fanbase being at the top of the list. Something must be done people say! In fact, that is happening with the current campaign to ban the infield shift.
Let me make it clear that I hate the idea of eliminating the infield shift. Baseball is not lacrosse where players are limited in where they can go on the field based on position. Whether that works in lacrosse or not I can’t tell you, but there’s not much evidence to support that banning the shift will make baseball more interesting and…better. Every time fans see a ground ball up the middle that would have been a hit 20 years ago, fielded by a middle infielder standing near or behind the 2nd base bag, who then make the easy throw to 1st base for the out, it makes announcers and fans grit their collective teeth and long for what used to be. Hitters claim they are being ‘robbed’ of hits. They doth protest too much.
An interesting article in Fangraphs earlier this year https://blogs.fangraphs.com/what-banning-the-shift-does-and-does-not-accomplish/ suggests that over time there is a barely discernable difference in hitter’s performance on balls hit in fair play since 2002.
From Fangraphs: ‘What matters is that the league-average BABIP (batting average on balls in play) hasn’t changed as much as one might have thought. From 2002 to ’19, it mostly hovered around the .300 mark. There’s been a noticeable downturn in the past two years that suggests a need for a ban on infield shifts, but if we’re considering fan satisfaction and experience, the argument doesn’t hold up. In 2019, the league-average BABIP was .299; in ’21, it was .293. The difference between the two is a mere six hits per 1,000 balls in play. Does the average fan watch enough baseball to parse that absence? I don’t think so.’
Baseball America came to much the same conclusion based on what’s happened in MiLB during the testing period of banning the shift: https://www.baseballamerica.com/stories/banning-shifts-may-not-make-much-difference-in-mlb/
‘In the opinion of managers whose teams played with the shift restrictions last year, the reason for the lack of impact was simple: while many balls that would have been outs with the shift turned into hits, a roughly equal number of balls that would have been hits against the shift turned into outs with infielders playing straight up.
“Nothing really changed,” Kevin Randel, manager of the Marlins’ Double-A affiliate at Pensacola, said last fall. “I didn’t see any advantages or disadvantages to it at all. In the end it all kind of evened out … You steal some outs and you give up some cheap hits. I think it was pretty much all the same.”
The caveat is shifts are not as common in the minors as they are in the majors, so banning the shift could make more of an impact in the major leagues.
But “could” is speculative. Based on the data from Double-A and the AFL last year, banning the shift may not be the panacea for the game’s offensive woes many hope it will be.”
Baseball (and softball for that matter) requires a pitcher and a catcher. The other 7 players can stand anywhere they or their manager wants them to. This is as old as the game is itself. No regulation. If a team wants to position 7 guys around 1st base that’s legal. And even though that’s never been done (or recorded), the fact that it could be is excellent and so….baseball!
However, many in and around MLB feel the banning of the shift is inevitable. It may even be instituted for the 2023 season. At the same time larger bases (primarily for player safety) AND a pitch clock might also be adopted. That’s a lot of new rules at the same time. How are we going to know which had the greatest impact?
Impact such as:
· Making games shorter. Games are simply too long. I don’t know if anyone would argue that they are too short or just the right length of time with games in MLB lasting well more than 3 hours. The pitch clock in MiLB has had a dramatic effect on the length of games. 29 minutes by MLB’s own admission! https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-06-16/minor-league-game-time-cut-29-minutes-with-pitch-clocks#:~:text=New%20York%20(AP)%20%2D%2D%20Pitch,season%20nears%20the%20halfway%20point.
· Making games more exciting and interesting. The current world of three true outcomes and boom or bust hitting is tiresome and the reasons multi-faceted. Players are not paid based on their efficiency, although the trend is ever so slowly moving in that direction. 200 strikeouts by a batter in one season is still acceptable, if that player also delivers 40 homers along with a bunch of RBIs. Taking away the shift will not change this. These guys are trying to hit it over the shift anyway!
Having shorter games will be In and of itself more interesting. Imagine a world of 2 ½ hour games — sometimes longer but sometimes — even shorter! Pitchers will have to pace themselves differently and may not be able to throw ‘max effort’ on every single pitch the way they seem to do now. Will that result in more hits? How about less pitchers ‘nibbling’ and more challenging of hitters earlier in the count? Wouldn’t that be more interesting?
The prospective MLB rule change that is least disruptive but with the potential for most impact is adding a pitch clock. And it’s not only pitchers that will have to adjust. There are plenty of hitters that have incessant (and idiosyncratic yet unnecessary) gesticulations that will no longer be a part of their game. They will have to be ready when the pitcher is ready. The penalty for exceeding the pitch clock is simple — a ball for a pitcher taking too long and a strike to the batter who does the same.
Change the pitch clock first and only. Then wait a year or two. If baseball is still deemed to be too slow and in danger of losing fans, then consider what else can be done to make the game better. But leave banning the infield shift out of it.
