The Double-A K rate
The reason why banning the shift produced such inconsequential impacts on batting averages at the Double-A level during the 2021-22 experimental seasons is simple when you stop to look at the data. The ball wasn’t in play.
Positioning of fielders is irrelevant if there’s no ball to field.
During 2018 and 2019, the two most recent pre-ban seasons, Double-A players fanned at a rate of 22.5 percent. During 2021 and 2022 – with the shift ban in place – that Double-A whiff rate accelerated to 24.9 percent.
That’s right … once a shift was banned, nearly one in four Double-A batters struck out, a significantly higher K-rate than prior to the ban.
The rate changed from 22.1 to 25.5 percent in the Eastern League, from 23 to 25.4 percent in the Southern League, and from 22.5 to 24 percent in the Texas League.
All manner of explanations are possible for why the strikeout rate jumped so dramatically once the shift was banned. Obviously the cast of Double-A players changes from year to year — far more so than in the majors — so it’s possible that in 2022 the roster of Double-A players was especially strikeout-prone.
Bu the more plausible explanation involves what scientists call the law of unintended consequences. Those are the things you didn’t expect to happen but which do happen when you experiment with underlying principles.