Eliminate defensive shifts?

[daves]

This has been proposed to eliminate shifts. Need more offense and this hurts the pull hitters.

What do you think?

[Torgonius]

Maybe millionaire ball players should learn to "hit 'em where they ain't."

But, expecting common sense from MLB is like expecting a pig to start singing Pavarotti.

[Kushiel]

MLB is boring these days compared to the past. The defense shifts and these supposedly great modern hitters hit it right into the shift if they even make contact. The Mendoza Line used to be a badge of shame, now it is, "So what? I hit 20+ homers." As a child of the 50's, I remember when it was embarrassing to strike out. Now they strike out often after spending a ludicrous amount of time at the plate. The attitude is an out is an out. But that is very poor baseball. An out moving a runner is of course much more productive over the course of a season.

I used to detest having to go to the men's room during the game; I am old now and go more. But I know I may not even miss one full at bat when I go.

[Syd Thrift]

Originally Posted by Torgonius

Maybe millionaire ball players should learn to "hit 'em where they ain't."

But, expecting common sense from MLB is like expecting a pig to start singing Pavarotti.

BABIP indicates that indeed ballplayers “hit ‘‘em where they ain’t” as often ore more often than they ever had. The issue is more with making contact in the first place.

[ubernoob]

Originally Posted by Syd Thrift

BABIP indicates that indeed ballplayers “hit ‘‘em where they ain’t” as often ore more often than they ever had. The issue is more with making contact in the first place.

Yup. The roid era proliferated HR hitting, spreading down to the lower levels of the game. How do you stop HR hitters? Strike them out by being a power pitcher.



So now every teenager wants to grow up throwing 105 with a fastball slider combo. It's just market inefficiencies working themselves out. At some point in the future we will see a couple dominant control pitchers and then the game will evolve again over the next 25 years.

[daves]

Need more offense so here are the new rules:

1. No shifts so pull hitters have a better chance
2. Bigger bases to increase safe runners.
3. Time clock between pitches to hurry up pitching decisions

Other rules to come:
4. Decrease strike zone?
5. Reduce glove size limit from 14 to 10 or 9?
6. Pitchers are not allowed to throw sinkers. curve balls or anything of the like.

[professor ape]

Originally Posted by daves

Need more offense so here are the new rules:

1. No shifts so pull hitters have a better chance
2. Bigger bases to increase safe runners.
3. Time clock between pitches to hurry up pitching decisions

Other rules to come:
4. Decrease strike zone?
5. Reduce glove size limit from 14 to 10 or 9?
6. Pitchers are not allowed to throw sinkers. curve balls or anything of the like.

Evidence shows that the shift has a very small impact. Overall it slightly suppresses offense so there is no reason for teams to stop doing it at this time, but it looks like banning it would do almost nothing.
Decreasing the strike zone would mean more pitches with no action. That is not what we need.
I’m in favor of the pitch clock and stricter rules about batters wasting time between pitches. I’d also like to see rules to require fences to be pushed back. More than reducing home runs, it would add more ground to cover which would then increase other hits.

[Torgonius]

Just replace pitchers with pitching machines set up to groove juicy fastballs down the center of the plate.

Bonus - Can reduce roster size by half. Also, no more pitching injuries.
Double Bonus - The confusion over what is or is not a balk is eliminated.
Ultimate Triple Bonus - No more DH!

[Syd Thrift]

I would be very, very surprised if breaking balls were disallowed. In fact, I would be flabbergasted. That's... just not going to happen. Don't be silly. There's no movement to do this, no study on the impact of them, no trial balloons in the minor leagues, absolutely nothing to indicate this is even being thought of.

Reducing the pitch clock would be nice... if the umpires enforce it. There's already a pitch clock rule in the books and there have been lots and lots of attempts for umpires to enforce it over the years, going back to the 1970s, and all that ever happens is at most they're enforced for a day or a week and then someone - usually a hitter who called time - raises a big fuss and they just stop again. Individual stadiums have even gone so far as to show the pitch clock on the scoreboard, which of course the umpires - because this is who umpires are, apparently - take this as a personal attack and so only enforce the clock on the home team.

IIRC the studies that have been done indicate that pitchers in general benefit from the game getting into a steady flow if memory serves, so if people think this will somehow increase offense, they are sorely mistaken.

The biggest moves I think the league could/maybe should make would need to be hammered out by additional CBAs and surely need to be implemented in the lower levels first:

1. Move the pitching mound back.
2. Make the ball slightly larger but also less tightly wound.

1 seems like some kind of MASSIVE change but it's literally the answer to a time baseball faced a similar issue in the early 1890s. The actual numbers look weird but in 1891 and 1892 leaguewide ERAs dipped down into the low 3s and threatened to go lower because, well, guys were throwing modern fastballs at 50 feet away, and on top of that they got to have a running start, or at least a little hop to start. The league removed the ability for pitchers to get that running start by making them pitch from a slab, and they moved that slab 10 feet back. As a result, offense boomed for the rest of the decade (although it should be said that pitchers continued to innovate and with the advent, I think, of spitballs, emery balls, and so on, the deadball era happened around 15 years later).

The second, frankly, is not far off from what the league has done accidentally (during World War II for instance) and perhaps not so accidentally in reverse when it juiced the balls in the 2010s. Making the diameter of the ball a little larger is probably the big blasphemy here but meh... balls didn't used to be so regular in size anyway, and this is just one more tool in the shed.

Part of me would love to see starters averaging 6.2 IP / GS like they did in the 80s instead of the 5 IP / GS of today. Pitchers rarely go through the lineup more than twice and so have to throw hard to everyone. People made this big stink about LOOGYs ruining the game a while back but even with the 3-batter rule in place, the starters-not-staying-in trend continues, and relievers just throw an entire inning at a time. I don't think this is going to change because I think people realized that this is indeed the ideal way to use pitchers. Instead I think we need to accept this as the new normal and do what we can to level the playing field in other ways.

[daves]

Anything for the hitters and scoring. Didn't they lower the mound in the past to decrease velocity?

[Hertston]

Nope. Why should the pitching team be restricted in where they post fielders? It's tactics, not some attempt to be unsportsmanlike or cheat. If shifts are effective it's up to offences to come up with a way to counter, not artificial changes to make the game more 'entertaining'.

[professor ape]

The main issue is the amount of time with no action. In 2021 the average game ran a record 3h11m. With the increase of the three true outcomes, there were only 46.8 balls put into play per game meaning that there was a ball put into play every 4m5s. Just ten years ago there was a ball in play every 3m22m (52.2 BIP with an average game time of 2h56m). That is a 20% increase in just ten years. Going back forty years there was only 2m42s between balls in play (58.2 BIP with an average game time of 2h38m). This means that the current game’s inactivity is up 50% since 1981. In other words, the game has been getting more and more boring. The focus needs to be on reversing this trend.

[Drivehud.com]

Originally Posted by Kushiel

MLB is boring these days compared to the past. The defense shifts and these supposedly great modern hitters hit it right into the shift if they even make contact. The Mendoza Line used to be a badge of shame, now it is, "So what? I hit 20+ homers." As a child of the 50's, I remember when it was embarrassing to strike out. Now they strike out often after spending a ludicrous amount of time at the plate. The attitude is an out is an out. But that is very poor baseball. An out moving a runner is of course much more productive over the course of a season.

I used to detest having to go to the men's room during the game; I am old now and go more. But I know I may not even miss one full at bat when I go.

When I was your age sonny... we used to hit with tree trunks, and the baseball was made out of shoestrings and yarn. lol

I'm almost 50... and I think very much the opposite. It's not the same game I grew up playing into HS. Baseball today is much more exciting. More HR's, more amazing athletes. If you want to get mad at something, get mad at math and science. Baseball is evolving, and as they say, evolve or die my friend. And yes, they figured out batting averages don't mean as much as OPS and other run scoring metrics.

Focus on what is good, instead of what used to be, and you'll appreciate the game in new and interesting ways.

[Kushiel]

Originally Posted by Drivehud.com

If you want to get mad at something, get mad at math and science.

Who said anything about being mad at anything or anybody? I think my word was boring. Boring is not being mad. Boring is not finding something to be mad at or incite any other emotion. How can you not find 3-4 hour games boring when compared to a fast moving 2 1/2 game of the past? How is a 5 minute AB culminated by a strikeout more exciting than a triple? Or a steal of home? Or a suicide squeeze?

Oh yeah, about the OBP reply. I was taught "a walk is as good as a hit" in the 1950's. Billy Beane did not invent OBP.

I love baseball. I do not love the all or nothing HR or go sit down attitude that is prevalent in the game.

[LeeD]

Originally Posted by Kushiel

Who said anything about being mad at anything or anybody? I think my word was boring. Boring is not being mad. Boring is not finding something to be mad at or incite any other emotion. How can you not find 3-4 hour games boring when compared to a fast moving 2 1/2 game of the past? How is a 5 minute AB culminated by a strikeout more exciting than a triple? Or a steal of home? Or a suicide squeeze?

Oh yeah, about the OBP reply. I was taught "a walk is as good as a hit" in the 1950's. Billy Beane did not invent OBP.

I love baseball. I do not love the all or nothing HR or go sit down attitude that is prevalent in the game.

Hear, hear. Today's game is boring and yes, it's boring precisely because GMs and their staffs have discovered that two walks and a three-run homer will win a lot of games. You get there by taking anything that's not right down the middle or in your personal wheelhouse, assisted by umpires who are afraid of the called strike. This maximizes pitch counts, minimizes action and balls in play, and wears out starting pitchers by the fifth or sixth inning.

Secondarily, it relegates the running game, restricts the bunt almost entirely to pitchers (who are now no longer batting in the majors), and encourages batters to keep swinging for the fences regardless of the count. It also forces pitchers to throw harder all the time, which leads to many more injuries.

Thirty or so years ago, NFL staffs discovered the so-called West Coast Offense, featuring lots of short, high-percentage passes. This stymied the blitz and the overwhelming pass rush, relegated the running game because ball control was now three completions for a first down, and generally made the game more interesting and more exciting. Baseball's sabermetric revelations have had the opposite effect, making the game much less interesting and much less exciting as we wait for one of the three true outcomes to occur, over and over again.