I already don't like the new guy.

[minnehan]

Answer for eliminating shifts: Hit the ball where they ain't.

[Lucky]

Eliminate the shift because it gives the defensive team a competitive advantage? Why not take away their gloves. Gloves give them a competitive advantage, too.

I agree with Pogues. If the defenders want to offer the hitter a giant hole to hit through, why not? If they want to all gather around second base, why not? Football (fascist sport that it is) has about two dozen rules about where everybody has to be located before the snap, and where they can go after the snap. Do we want that kind of rigidity for baseball?

[Don Quixote]

The new Commissioner is inheriting a game that's in pretty good shape. If he wants to work on something that really needs fixing, let him work on the pace of the game. Order umpires to order hitters into the batter's box. If they have to buy batting gloves and jockstraps that actually fit and don't require "adjustment" after every pitch, so be it.

[Moonlight J]

Rosenthal is reporting some are kicking around the idea of making a pitcher face more than one batter a game.

Here's the chart showing the trend of pitchers facing only one batter in a game by season

[madducks]

Rosenthal is reporting some are kicking around the idea of making a pitcher face more than one batter a game.

Would managers also be prevented from using two pinch hitters in a row?

[Moonlight J]

Would managers also be prevented from using two pinch hitters in a row?

Who knows, but pinch hitting takes much less time than it does to do a pitching change. I say bring back the bullpen carts!

[Silentmist]

Let's bring back Ted Williams from the grave (or the freezer), and see what he'd do if someone tried an infield shift on him.

[Fresno Bob]

Let's bring back Ted Williams from the grave (or the freezer), and see what he'd do if someone tried an infield shift on him.

they stopped shifting on Bonds when he cricket-batted a double down the line.

[Fresno Bob]

Rosenthal is reporting some are kicking around the idea of making a pitcher face more than one batter a game.

Here's the chart showing the trend of pitchers facing only one batter in a game by season

LOOGY revolt!

[Moonlight J]

that same image with wOBA as the other axis.

[bryanbutler]

that same image with wOBA as the other axis.

i'm skeptical of that correlation. 1200 PA for the single batters faced isn't significant enough in the face of ~180000 total PA in a season for all players...

[bryanbutler]

when i first looked at that graph, i thought it was pittsburgh pirates on the abscissa ...

[Kevin Seitzer]

Let's bring back Ted Williams from the grave (or the freezer), and see what he'd do if someone tried an infield shift on him.

This is what he wrote about facing the shift in his book:

When I had such a hard time with Boudreau's shift, and ones like it that sprung up in 1947 and afterward, I survived by learning to hit to left field. Everybody was saying--and the Boston writers were writing--that I wasn't trying to hit to left, that I was too stubborn, that all I cared about was ramming the ball into the teeth of the shift, getting base hits in spite of it. The fact was, I was having a hard time learning to hit to left. It wasn't because I didn't get any advice. Of that I got a truckload.

Ty Cobb wrote me a two-page letter, outlining how he would do it. We met at Yankee Stadium during the 1947 World Series, and he took me around behind a telephone booth and we talked. He said, 'Oh boy, Ted, if they had ever pulled that stuff on me, that drastic shift...,' and his mouth was watering, seeing in his mind's eye the immortal Ty Cobb lashing the ball into that open range in left field.

Well, Cobb was more of a push hitter, a slap hitter. He choked up two inches from the bottom and held the bat with his hands four inches apart. He stood close to the plate, his hands forward. He had great ability to push the ball, to lash hits all around. He was a great athlete, maybe the greatest, but was a completely different animal from me, and his words were like Greek.

The arc of my swing was much greater than Cobb's. What he said would apply to guys more his type, guys who choked up on the bat more and pushed the ball around. That wasn't in me. I was down, with a longer stroke, a greater arc.

When I beat the shift, I did it by taking my stance a little farther from the plate, striding slightly more into the pitch--but concentrating on getting on top of the ball and pushing it. A push swing, an inside-out swing, fully extended, the hands ahead of the fat part of the bat. This produced contact at 90 degrees or more from the direction of the pitch, and sent the ball to the left of the pitcher's box, away from the shift. Almost like hitting pepper.

[TranaGreg]

great section ... can you share that with the new commish?

I loved that book.

[Kevin Seitzer]

Ran across this photo on Twitter today. Fun stuff.

https://twitter.com/Hashim305/statuses/481616287680839680

The Astros Freddie Freeman shift: Infield shifted to pull, outfield opposite field. Never seen anything like it