Explaining baseball’s next experiment to limit shifts: The ‘pie-slice rule’

[Revad]

6 hours ago, Dtwncbad said:

One obvious reason why the game is the way it is today is pitching velocity.  When I was a kid, they would talk about a guy having a good fatal if they threw 92.

92 now is considered soft with lots and lots of guys at 98, 99 up to 102ish.

The natural result of that is more strikeouts and the ball traveling further when you square it up.

It is what it is.  Unless they want to move the mound back, and I really don’t think they are going to do that.

And I am not sure baseball is really all that upset with the strikeouts (big moment for pitcher) and home runs (big moment for hitter) being dominant.

Not much is going to change any time soon.

Most major league hitters would be rod crew if they could be.  If they could do it successfully every left handed hitter would bunt against the shift. It’s not one hitter that’s struggling, mostly all of them.  The game is changing, managing that change makes sense done properly.

[CaliAngel]

44 minutes ago, Revad said:

Most major league hitters would be rod crew if they could be.  If they could do it successfully every left handed hitter would bunt against the shift. It’s not one hitter that’s struggling, mostly all of them.  The game is changing, managing that change makes sense done properly.

Bunting is not that hard. Honestly, it's not. And I'm not singling you out, I'm talking about the overall tone people have about bunting, and they need to stop acting like not every player can do it. They can, they just don't practice it enough because they'd rather pull and hit the snot out of the ball for an out into the shift than help the team and themselves by taking a relatively free base hit. 

I would rather a guy get a couple outs trying to get better at bunting down 3rd than continuously hitting directly into the shift for outs. IMO keep bunting until they stop shifting on you. Once you get 3, 4, 5 free passes bunting, I'd imagine that they'd stop with the shifting and you could go back to your regularly scheduled player positions.  

But instead lefties are being stubborn. They're continuing to pull the ball when it's on the outside of the plate instead of going with the pitches on the outside of the plate and hitting the ball the other way against the shift. They don't take advantage when the entire left side of the field is empty. It's that simple. And instead of forcing batters to ADJUST to the defense like they should, MLB is giving the batters a pass essentially telling them not to worry about adjusting because "we'll fix this for you."  

And that's stupid. Don't get me wrong, I hate the shift too. But baseball is a game of adjustments, and now they're taking that away. And I don't think there should be mandated rules restricting a defensive strategy just because the batters are too stubborn to adjust. 

[m0nkey]

Agree, see ball hit ball.

[AngelsLakersFan]

10 hours ago, arch stanton said:

Anyone looking to get old style baseball back will be greatly disappointed if this is the way they go about it. I've been watching baseball for 50 years now and just like everything else from 50 years ago the game as played then is mostly obsolete. If you want the game to be about singles up the middle and moving runners and such then you have to make it much, much harder to strike out batters and to hit home runs. Maybe you soften the bats and balls. Maybe raise the fences and move them back a little. Get rid of some of the body armor they wear at the plate. It just seems short-sighted to say that hitters should adjust when teams run out multiple triple digit relievers and even little guys can hit 25 HRs in a season. The game is not played by the same type of player and shouldn't be expected to be played the same way

 

Exactly this.

If they want to promote a contact oriented game then they need to make changes that promote contact. Banning the shift only serves to keep the game the same while forcing the defense to play sub optimally. 

[Revad]

Uh where is Jeff Fletcher when we need him.  It’s all quite data driven nowadays.  Major league hiiters with elite hand eye coordination can’t successfully bunt against the stuff pitchers have nowadays.