MLB rule changes: Why the shift rule is a horrible idea

Last week’s adoption by MLB of a rule severely limiting the ability of teams to use a shift is a bad idea founded on a flawed premise and is destined to fail in its stated premise of restoring ball-in-play action to the game.

The flaws in this rule change are so obvious that one is forced to conclude the game’s decision-making bodies are reacting solely to public pressure — which polling suggests is heavily in favor of shift bans — rather than to the obvious flaws in the plan that experts ought to be paid to notice.

The rule that goes into effect with the start of the 2023 season will require that all teams place two infielders on each side of second base, and that their feet be on the infield dirt when the pitch is thrown. That means no more third basemen or shortstops shifting into short right field to cut off sinking line drives or hot grounders and throwing the runner out at first.

The desire to find solutions that will make the game more attractive, especially to younger fans, is understandable. The average 2022 game  is attracting fewer than 27,000 fans, off about five percent (1,500) from the last pre-pandemic season, 2019.

Since hitting a peak of 30,895 in 2012, MLB attendance is fallen virtually annually. The declines are not just limited to on-site activity. The 2022 All-Star Game drew a record low TV audience.

Since the steady drop in attendance coincides almost perfectly with the increased use of shifts, it’s understandable to see a cause-and-effect. But it’s nowhere near that simple. Nor is the cure nearly as simple as legislating the infield shift out of existence.

Here are three reasons why the MLB shift ban is a bad idea doomed to fail.

Winning

The shift came into widespread popularity over the course of the past decade for one primary reason: Teams like to win and shifting promotes winning. Nothing in the 2023 rules changes affects that most essential bottom line principle.

The primary outgrowth of what might be termed the Statcast era has been a league-wide swing away from hitting for average and toward hitting for power. In simple terms, it is a more efficient way to win.

Proof of this is readily available in the data. MLB teams are on pace to average 175 home runs and a .397 slugging average.

But an emphasis on the power game brings with it subsidiary costs, and those are even more evident. When the 2022 season concludes, nearly one in every four plate appearances will have ended in a strikeout. That’s a 20 percent increase in the overall strikeout rate from just a decade ago.

Over the past winter, teams gave out nearly $860 million worth of contracts to five players, all known for power. None of the five — Trevor Story in Boston, Corey Seager and Marcus Semien in Texas , Kyle Schwarber in Philadelphia and Javier Baez in Detroit — is likely to finish the season with a  batting average above .250. They will, however, strike out close to 700 times.

Schwarber in fact leads the league in both home runs (37) and strikeouts (179).

When somebody complains about baseball having become a no-action game, that’s what they’re talking about

Banning the shift does nothing at all to change the governing front office dynamic that strikeouts are an acceptable price to pay for power, which is viewed as the key to winning. As long as that dynamic holds, front offices will continue to emphasize — and pay for — no-contact. Banning the shift has no role to play in that.

Altering the shift

The new rule bans infield shifts, but only to a degree. It is also silent on outfield shifts. For that reason, even fans who strongly desire to see shifting banned will soon find themselves disenchanted nest season.

Again, we go back to the principle that shifts promote winning and teams will do that which promotes winning.

Therefore, expect to see at least two new trends in 2023.

The first will be the modified infield shift. Teams may not be able to station three players on one side of second base, but that won’t limit their ability to maneuver their shortstop or second baseman very, very close to second in a defensive posture that will amount to a shift. The only restriction will be the rule requiring them to start on the infield dirt.

Effectively, then, the shift will merely be modified, not eliminated.

Teams will have a second avenue open to them, one raised by former Rays, Cubs and Angels manager Joe Maddon during an interview on ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball. The rule change only bans infielders from moving into advantageous positions in the outfield; it says nothing about outfielders doing so.

As Maddon noted, what is to stop teams from defending a Schwarber type — a notorious left-hander pull hitter — by moving their left fielder into short right, the spot heretofore occupied by an infielder? Nothing, that’s what.

In fact, Maddon forecast — probably presciently — that when the infield shift is banned, teams will gravitate even more toward the use of extreme pull hitters — with their attendant high strikeout totals — because the shift ban removes the principal prohibition against doing so. Result: Even more strikeouts, even less action.

The moral question

Finally we come to the one question nobody really wants to address, the morality of banning the shift.

It is the game’s way of preventing a team from utilizing its best available strategies in order to win, which ought to be what baseball is all about.

It also incentivizes lack of performance by forgiving players for their own weakness.

Think of it this way. Prohibiting a team from using the shift on the theory that opponents can’t cope with it is the equivalent of prohibiting Jacob DeGrom from throwing a slider because opponents only hit .141 against it. The notion of penalizing success rather than encouraging adaptation is antithetical to the game’s core principles … yet that’s what this rule change does.

Across MLB there are examples of players who do successfully adapt.

• On Chicago’s North Side, shortstop Nico Hoerner is batting .290 with a 10.7 percent whiff rate, one of the game’s lowest.
• In Minnesota, Luis Arraez is batting .315 and striking out just 7.5 percent of the time.
• Cleveland’s Stephen Kwan has his Guardians positioned in first place in the AL Central with a .291 average and a 9.3 percent strikeout rate.
• Teammate Jose Ramirez is carrying an .880 OPS and striking out just 11.5 percent of the time.

Ramirez, with 26 home runs and 109 RBI, puts the lie to the accepted notion that strikeouts are a natural and inevitable byproduct of power.