Quote:
Originally Posted by Jason Moyer
The numbers they gave to demonstrate the impact of the shift are almost entirely meaningless. They cited a massive drop in batting average from 2011 to now, but BABIP hasn't changed significantly since 1994 and is still around 10 points higher than it was in the 80's and 20 points higher than it was in the 70's. Now who knows, maybe without shifting BABIP would have kept creeping higher and higher for 10-20 years and banning it will cause some huge jump, but I still don't see why it's a problem.
The problem with the balance between hitting/pitching/fielding is the number of strikeouts, and I don't see anything in these rule changes that addresses that.
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BABIP is down around 10 points from when the shift started to be widely implemented circa 2017. But yeah, 10 points. Big whoop. That's around 7 points of batting average. This will not have the big effect that either the pro or the con side think it will.
The other stuff, especially the pitch clock, I'm all for. Well, maybe especially squared the pickoff timer, which I first saw as a proposal in one of Bill James' Abstracts in the 1980s. Yes, runners will be able to take leads of like 50 feet if you use up both of your pickoff moves. That means that in effect you get one. The second basically becomes if the runner is leading waaay too far off of first and you are 100% sure you can get the out.