The Shift

The trend toward analytics in baseball has led teams to employ infield shifts with a regularity new to the game, and I can’t say I approve. It is not so much the hits I see taken away from my favorite Twins, such as Max Kepler, as the hits I see a shift giving to the opposition. If I were a pitcher and I got Albert Pujols to hit a weak grounder to the spot where the second baseman normally stands, and it rolls into right field for a hit because there is no one there, I’d be frustrated and pissed at my coaches. I didn’t keep scientific count, but I felt the Twins were being hurt far more often than they were being helped by shifting their infielders in the games I watched. More annoying: when a hitter beat the shift by intentionally hitting the other way, the Twins kept the same shift on when that batter next hit, as if to say, it’s not the shift’s fault.
There was talk earlier in the season about a potential future rules change, requiring two infielders to be positioned on either side of second base. My hope is that the players will remove shifts from the game themselves, by hitting away from the shift or even – as Eddie Rosario did once (but why only him and only once?) – by bunting toward third base when no one’s there. The other way to beat the shift, which seems to be the Twins’ main strategy, is to hit over it, into the stands. That, of course, was the strategy long employed by Ted Williams.