Photo: Andrew Simon MLB - Twitter
Baseball infield shift
The infield shift
We’re in the final days before the first games under Major League Baseball’s newly implemented rules for 2023 and in the weeks ahead there will be lots of speculation about their impact.
Some rule changes will be more noticeable than others: The pitch clock is likely to draw everyone’s attention at first, while increasing the size of bases from 15 inches to 18 inches might only be noticed by the most observant fans. No rule change has been discussed more often, however, than banning the shift.
Until about a decade ago infield shifts were a rare sight across baseball. In recent years it was a staple of defensive strategy, though: Last season Sports Info Solutions reported that two teams, the Dodgers and Blue Jays, shifted on more than 50% of batted balls against them. The Astros used a shift on nearly four out of five plate appearances against left-handed hitters.
Both Feet on the Infield
For 2023, however, the shift is no more. Starting this season at the time a pitch is thrown defenses will be required to have two infielders with both feet on the infield dirt on each side of second base. They’re still likely to shade one way or the other, but the days of second basemen playing in shallow right field are over. Hitters asked about it this winter have largely been excited for the change. Mike Petriello of MLB.com ran the data and estimated that a shift ban in 2022 would have given Brewers outfielder Tyrone Taylor 10 extra hits, raising his batting average by 27 points and his on-base plus slugging from .729 to .780.
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It remains to be seen if those numbers will come to fruition and how they’ll measure up against the loss of offense when teams have to reprioritize defense at certain positions. Brewers’ fans may remember, for example, when Travis Shaw and Mike Moustakas each saw playing time at second base in 2018 and 2019. Neither had significant experience in the middle infield, but the Brewers played them there to keep their bats in the lineup and played a third defender on their side of their vicinity when an opposing hitter was likely to put the ball in play on that side. With that option no longer available, keeping an offense-first player in the lineup that way becomes a riskier proposition and those guys likely get replaced with another light-hitting traditional middle infielder.
Furthermore, a less-often cited provision of the rule is going to create an increased challenge for managers. Not only are they not allowed to position three infielders on either side of second base, they’re also not allowed to switch defenders from one side of the infield to another. This strategy could have been used to hide a weak or out-of-position defender, like the Mets did on August 16, 2017, when injuries forced catcher Travis d’Arnaud into the lineup at third base. Then-manager Terry Collins limited d’Arnaud’s defensive exposure by playing him at third against lefty batters but moving him to second against righties, so he was always positioned opposite the batter’s pull side. His defensive position in the box score reads, “3B-2B-3B-2B-3B-2B-3B-2B-3B-2B-3B-2B-3B-2B-3B-2B-3B-2B-3B.” The plan worked: d’Arnaud played all nine innings and fielded just one ball, a pop-up to second base.
Late Game Challenges
Even if teams don’t have an emergency infielder to “hide,” however, the concept of switching infielders from one side of the diamond to the other in response to batter tendencies would have made sense. If teams aren’t allowed to use more defenders to attempt to protect the places where a batter is most likely to hit the ball, then it stands to reason that the next best thing would be to put better defenders there. With that said, it’s not allowed.
Eliminating that strategic practice, however, could create some late game challenges. Across the majors last season there were 175 instances where a defender started a game at either second or third base but moved to the other position at some point during a game. Brewers infielder Luis Urías did it 22 times, more often than any other player.
There were 189 more cases where an infielder played both second base and shortstop in the same game, plus a few dozen more first base-third base swaps and even a handful of shortstop-first base changes. It’s not unusual for a team’s second-best defensive shortstop to play at second base, or for teams to have a player that can slot in at second or third. Now, however, any late game strategic changes are going to have to be built around a new requirement that a player who starts on one side of the infield cannot be moved to the other. This is going to impact bench usage in games and could even impact roster construction as teams can no longer depend on being able to sub an infielder who is already in the game for another.
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Any time baseball’s rules change it raises two questions:
- Will this change solve the problem it was implemented to address?
- What else will it change?
When it comes to the shift ban, the answers to that second question might be larger than anticipated.
