The Bernstein Brief: Limiting MLB Shifts Is A Terrible Idea
By Dan Bernstein-
CBSChicago.com senior columnist
(CBS) New MLB commissioner Rob Manfred says he's open to the idea of legislating out extreme defensive shifts, which means I'm open to thinking Manfred's tenure is off to a stupid start.
Everybody agrees that the game needs more runs, but to suggest that shifting is the problem is to ignore all the widely available information that proves it isn't. Analysts all over baseball have studied this in depth, and there's agreement that the stability of BABIP relative to runs indicates that a ball hit into fair territory is no more likely to be turned into an out than ever.
It's the strike zone, we now know. Average pitch velocity is higher than at any time in the game's history, and umpires are calling too many balls as strikes. Catchers are successfully framing unhittable pitches for called strikes as a measured aspect of their job now, too. Fix all that, and you get more runs.
Baseball's geometry means shifting presents as much offensive opportunity in the swaths of open grass and more difficult base-coverage responsibilities. A team is invited to take advantage, and many do.
If Manfred is going to start chalking lines on the field to designate no-go zones for defenses in an effort to solve a problem that has been proved not to exist, the game may be in bad hands.
Dan Bernstein is a co-host of 670 The Score's "Boers and Bernstein Show" in afternoon drive. Follow him on Twitter @dan_bernstein and read more of his columns here.
