Paul Articulates – Life without the shift

Major League Baseball has regulated the infield shift out of existence for the 2023 season, finally bowing to pressure from the fans to eliminate this exaggerated tactic.

The rule change requires four players in the infield with two on each side of second base – this means no one on the outfield grass and a more traditional alignment of 3B and SS on the left side with 2B and 1B on the right side.  Now you have to realize that players will be allowed to move as soon as a pitch is released, so theoretically there could be dynamic shifts but movement impacts reaction time.

What do you think the impact will be on baseball?  My opinion is that it will not be a significant change.  Baseball evolved into defensive shifts as stronger focus on analytics pushed predictions for where players would hit the ball. At first, this seemed to work as players with fine-tuned swings were slow to adapt.  Batting averages went down as players hit more balls at players than they hit balls in open spaces.   

But one thing we know about baseball – players adapt.  Most of the baseball purists (who didn’t like the shift in the first place) believed that players would adapt by just “hitting it where they ain’t”.  That wasn’t the case for most hitters.  In the last few years, swings were adjusted to hit the ball over the shift leading to more fly ball outs but also more deep hits and more home runs.  This evolution was driving baseball into an all-or-nothing affair as both home runs and strikeouts became much more prevalent.  The increased strike-out rate and all the roll-over ground balls into the shift have brought batting averages down as a whole, with the cumulative league average at a 50 year low .243.  In fact, the league average has been dropping since 2006, so it was about time that some of the defensive advantages were removed.

I think there will be an uptick in the league batting average as the shift is eliminated, but it will not be very dramatic.  Players are still rewarded for power, and those big swings that deliver big flies also deliver lots of K’s.  I don’t see that changing until a guy like Jeff McNeil gets paid as much for hitting .326 as Aaron Judge gets for slugging .686 – which is somewhere between never and forever.  Batting averages will slowly rise as rule adjustments favor the offense to keep people in seats.

What will the impact be on the Mets?  Here I think there may be some hope.  First of all, the Mets have players on the roster like Jeff McNeil, Luis Guillorme, and Mark Canha that have excellent bat control and are capable of hitting the ball in an open whole wherever it is.  Also, the Mets have fewer “big swing” players than most of the teams – and certainly less than anyone in the NL East.  Last year the Mets were fifth in MLB with 772 runs scored, and their .259 team batting average was second (CWS batted .264).  With an uptick in batting average comes more runners on base, more runs scored, which is pretty good leverage with a pitching staff like the Mets have in 2023.

Time will tell if the new rules improve the quality of baseball in 2023 and beyond.  It is always tough to predict.  What is easier to predict is some sustained success for a Mets ball club that has made many off-season moves to get better.