Why Major League Baseball should ban the shift

If you watched the world series this past month, or this past regular season or the last decade of baseball, you would realize something looks a little different than it did back when you played in high school.

The fielders aren’t playing at their specified positions. The third baseman is supposed to play by third base, not in shallow right field. MLB teams have been adapting to the fact that certain hitters aren’t hitting the ball to certain parts of the field.

As a result, defenses are positioned right where the batter hits the ball more times than not. This is good for major league teams because you would be a failing franchise if you decided not to shift against certain batters. The MLB as a league needs to make a rule change.

Why don’t batters just bunt the ball or hit the ball where the fielders aren’t?

This is a good argument, and one may think, “They are major league hitters, the best of the best,” but as pitching velocity and pitching movement continue to increase it is becoming much more difficult to do what Willie Keeler once advised and “hit it where they ain’t.”

Pitchers are throwing harder than ever. Average fastball velocities are way up, and hitters are having a tough time catching up. To make matters worse for hitters, pitch movement and spin rate are also at an all-time high.

Pitchers in the MLB today have the option to throw blazing fastballs or a mixture of devastating off-speed pitches that dip and dive at the last second.

Why is now the time for change? This year the league-wide batting average was .244, and that isn’t an outlier, as last year it was .245. That is the sixth lowest batting average all time.

The last time it was that low was in 1972. The following year MLB implemented the designated hitter (American League only… for now) to bring up batting average.

The only other time it was as low as it was this year, besides during the dead ball era where the ball was much less lively and the game was played a different way, was in 1967 and 1968 which led to the mound being lowered. There is most definitely an offensive production problem in baseball.

The solution is simple. You can’t put players in an exact spot, and I am against putting circles on the field to tell players where to stand. That is just not how baseball should be played. The first step is to make all infielders play in the infield. Both feet must be on the infield dirt during the pitch.

The other rule that needs to be enforced is having two players on each side of second base.

No more overloading the right side against left-handed hitters only for them to sharply ground out to the third baseman sitting in shallow right field between first and second. Baseball will look like it is supposed to: a pitcher, a catcher, two infielders on the left side, two infielders on the right side and three outfielders.