MLB "Pie Slice" infield

The minor leagues are a good place to experiment with changes and see what works and what doesn't.

 

Let's see how it works out.

 

Well, I did run for the U.S. House of Representatives in 2014 as a Libertarian.

 

"Major League Baseball has been testing shift limits all season at Double-A and Class A, requiring teams to have four players on the infield, including two on each side of second base."

"We've said for years that the minor leagues provide us with a really important opportunity to experiment, learn and make sure we understand how something's going to work if we deploy it on the field," baseball commissioner Rob Manfred said last month."

 

I don't really like it. Watching teams shift is one of the few I interesting things in the game. I like NCAA baseball better than MLB. One reason is you see some crazy shifts.
I am a football fan. I think baseball is boring. Baseball fans tell me that it is not boring. Then they explain all this strategy that they think I don't understand but I do. Trying to gear the game to more scoring is admitting that it is boring.
I think the most subtle yet effective way to increase offense would be to tighten up the strike zone or speed up ball cores. They can do either without visually changing the game.
And then you have the pitchers, who were never injured, that had Tommy John surgery just to pick up 4 mph ball speed.....

 

I love a good pitcher's duel. I also don't like "basketball on turf" football. I also don't like high-scoring hockey games, nor high scoring soccer matches. Now, to have a high-scoring game in sports every once in a while as a novelty I don't have a problem with, but not as a regular sports diet. The only place I like high-scoring games is in basketball, but even then I don't like a regular diet of 135-130 NBA scores.

I also realize that I am old and that I yell at clouds.

 

I think the idea for hitters is to hit the ball where the defenders are not situated. But rather than learn how to hit to all fields, some want to enable poor batsmen.

 

Shifting is a defensive strategy is it not? Why artificially take it away? Cheating to make the game more interesting? Certainly shifting could go against one easily. Bad rule.

 

How is changing the rules "cheating"? Leagues change rules over time.

 

True. But it seems to me to take away defensive strategies that are, and have been legitimate. Seems like to big a change to me. Seems dishonest to me. I could be 100% wrong.

 

I think that was more to protect pitcher from injuries and speed up game.

 

I agree with Reynolds.
Baseball is a game of analytics. Defense makes a change. Offense counters that change. You don't like the extreme shifts...learn to hunt down the opposite line. Learn to hit to all areas of the field.
Rotational hitting (look it up) teaches batters to meet the ball on plane and drive it over the fence. The shift forces teams to play station to station (small ball) where you move people from base to base.

I love baseball precisely because of the strategy that is required. Unfortunately Jane and John Doe just want to see constant movement (futbol). They don't want to have to think about the reasons why a manager picked his lineup and set the defense based upon the batter who comes to the plate. They just want runs scored (but only for their team) yet, they don't want the game to go 3+ hours. Baseball needs to stop worrying about these things and just play ball.

 

I hate the shift with a passion, it should never have been allowed in the first place. Bad for the game.

 

Defenses have been shifting for many decades, even before the late-1940s "Boudreau shift" against Ted Williams. Slicing up the field into go/no-go segments is as artificial IMO as the current extra-inning ghost runners. (In theory, a pitcher could retire 29 batters without allowing a baserunner and lose a 1-0 game. I'll be very glad when/if THAT goes away.) Other ideas I've read is mandating that infielders cannot play on the outfield grass, but they do that no for slow runners even when no shift is in use. Whatever rules are promulgated concerning shifts, teams will find a way to work around them - the "2 infielders on each half" could result in some bizarre repositioning. Maybe have the 3rd baseman stand 250' from home while the left fielder moves to short right-center. (Which would likely trigger another rule.)

 

...don't hold back, tell us what you really think about it...

I'm not even an avid baseball fan but I don't like it, it seems too authoritarian by removing the freedom to choose strategy.

Why do they feel the need for this rule? What prompted it?

 

The game has changed drastically with the rampant use of sabermetrics. Now it is all about launch angle and a bunch of other new statistical categories so that now so much of the game is now just swing for the fences(thus the need to pull the ball) and strikeouts. It would be like the NFL offenses going to throwing a bomb on most of their offensive plays.