MLB in 2023: Why banning the shift might hurt baseball
By Bill Felber
When spring training games begin later this month, MLB fans will get their first eyeball look at the most controversial of several rules changes put in place this year: a ban on the shift.
The new rule will require teams to position four players on the infield dirt, two on either side of second base, when the play begins.
Proponents say the idea is to emphasize athleticism. Writing for Sports Illustrated, Tom Verducci heralded the ban, saying the change will invite “athleticism and effort rather than the clusters of large appliance-sized fielders planted where a laminated card cooked up by math wizards tells them to stand.”
But there is a legitimate question whether banning the shift will accomplish the kinds of entertainment-based improvements Verducci pines for in the SI article. And based on the laboratory data collected to date, it’s even more problematic whether the shift ban will reverse the most recurring problem hampering baseball over the past decade, the declining rate at which the ball is actually put in play.
Make no mistake, that’s where the problem with the modern game lies. It’s evident in a comparison with the most basic data of the modern game compared with as little as 15 years ago.
As recently as 2008 — when the idea of a shift was reserved for the most insistent of dead pull hitters — the Major League batting average was .264, and the strikeout rate was 17.5 percent. That strikeout rate is important because no matter what the rules say you can or cannot do with your fielders, the discussion is irrelevant if the ball isn’t hit.
Over the ensuing 15 seasons, shifting has become more popular, to the degree that in recent years shifts have been employed against about 33 percent of batters.
If the batter was left-handed, the shift rate rose above 50 percent.
Over the same period, batting averages began to fall significantly. That .264 MLB average of 2008 dropped to .255 by 2011, then to .252 in 2019 and to .244 in 2021. Last year’s average was .243, an all-time low.
Since the shift is such an obvious strategy, and since its increased usage coincides so neatly with the dropoff in average, the obvious conclusion is that the shift has played a large role, if not entirely caused, the decline in hitting. But a closer look at the data might prompt you to reconsider that presumption.