MLB in 2023: Why banning the shift might hurt baseball
By Bill Felber
The ban at Double-A
The Double-A portion of MLB’s minor league system is divided into three leagues — The Eastern, Southern and Texas Leagues. Beginning in 2021 and continuing through 2022, those leagues were used as laboratories for a study of the impact of the shift ban.
How did that lab experiment work out?
During the 2021 and 2022 Double-A seasons, players on affected teams made nearly a quarter-million official at-bats and produced 61,700 hits, a .247 batting average.
When we compare that result with the same data from the two most recent Double-A seasons during which a shift was allowed — those being 2018 and 2019 — the results are hardly encouraging for proponents of a ban. The Double-A batting average in those two seasons was .248, exactly one point higher than when the shift was outlawed.
There were slight variations among leagues, but nothing dramatic. Southern League batters hit .244 pre-ban, .245 post-ban. Eastern Leaguers batted .245 pre-ban, .241 post-ban. In the Texas League, the change was from .254 to .254.
If the shift was the problem stifling offense, how could averages have declined in a post-shift era? To answer that, we must look for another problem or problems. That gets us back to the strikeout data.