Don't ever math at meInvincibleCakeEater wrote:Pitchers make up 50 percent of MLB players.CardsofSTL wrote:Yeah... That'd be like creating an offense only position to accommodate players that are defensive liabilities....oh [expletive]Socnorb11 wrote:Exactly. You don't re-define the game to accommodate a small fraction of players.Joe Shlabotnik wrote:This is silly. Other than the battery, the 7 defenders can play whereever they damn well please. Good hitters will find the holes. Play ball.
Manfred gains support to limit defensive shifts
- CardsofSTL
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Re: Manfred gains support to limit defensive shifts
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Re: Manfred gains support to limit defensive shifts
I laughed.go birds wrote:
- Kincaid
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Re: Manfred gains support to limit defensive shifts
You just leave it up to the umpires' judgment. If they think the third player on the right side is closer, they tell the defense to realign, and if they think the 3B in shallow left is closer, they're fine.AWvsCBsteeeerike3 wrote:And if the 3b in LF is a step closer than the RF, who is going to measure that? I mean if a batter can’t push one 8 feet down the left field line, how worried is a team about him hitting it 300 feet down the same line.Kincaid wrote:You could just define infielders as the four closest fielders to home plate (excluding the pitcher and catcher) for the purpose of enforcing MDCardsFan's rule.
If MLB wants to limit shifts, I don't think coming up with an enforceable rule is going to be a serious obstacle.
Teams rarely use extreme shifts in the outfield like they do in the infield because for most hitters, any extreme pull tendencies are more likely to manifest on ground balls than fly balls. For example, Anthony Rizzo faced more shifts than anyone in baseball this year, but if you look at his spray chart, his fly balls are spread much more evenly across the field than his ground balls. So if a team wanted to bring an outfielder in level with their deepest infielder so that they can effectively play their infield shift in exchange for a really shallow left fielder, they could, but they'd likely be giving up a lot of extra base hits to left field. The cost would be more significant than a normal shift because most hitters can naturally exploit leaving a third of the outfield under-defended even if they rarely hit the ball the other way on the ground.
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Re: Manfred gains support to limit defensive shifts
How about if we just draw 4 circles in the infield and 3 in the outfield, and insist that the team must have one players' foot in each circle on every pitch?
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Re: Manfred gains support to limit defensive shifts
I’m sure mlb could enact a rule to eliminate shifts but my point is more or less that it has the potential to be a cumbersome rule with unintended consequences. And I remain in favor of keeping it but it’s not a huge deal I guess. Thanks for the info, Kincaid. Crazy that pull tendencies only show up on ground balls as opposed to both gb and fb.
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Re: Manfred gains support to limit defensive shifts
“Launch angle” isn’t new. It’s a way of defining something that batters have been talking about for 100 years.
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Re: Manfred gains support to limit defensive shifts
How is this enforced? Do the umps call a violation because the SS has one foot on the right side of second? And the batter gets a do-over? Could easily turn into another Brett bat or NFL QB sack fiasco.
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Re: Manfred gains support to limit defensive shifts
If you're out of position upon the ball being delivered, it's akin to a balk?Radbird wrote:How is this enforced? Do the umps call a violation because the SS has one foot on the right side of second? And the batter gets a do-over? Could easily turn into another Brett bat or NFL QB sack fiasco.
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Re: Manfred gains support to limit defensive shifts
That sounded just as ridiculous as you intended it to be when I first read it, but on second thought, maybe a compromise in this situation is having the players be in a certain area when the pitcher comes set. Sort of like the offense coming set in football. Then, once the windup starts, the defense can move anywhere. It would make shifting still possible, but risky, since the defender would be on the move toward the shift zone, with momentum carrying him one direction when the ball was put in play, instead of stationary with the ability to move either direction.Socnorb11 wrote:How about if we just draw 4 circles in the infield and 3 in the outfield, and insist that the team must have one players' foot in each circle on every pitch?