MLB: 5 tasks new commissioner should prioritize

4. Institute an ‘illegal defense’ rule

As I argue in this feature, excessive defensive shifting is spoiling our enjoyment of baseball. We live in a post-steroid, pitcher-dominant era, with hits scarce, home runs even scarcer, and runs at a premium. The aggressive shift, implemented with greater variety and regularity by managers than at any other time in baseball history, is enabling the suppression, smothering left-handed hitters especially.

We’ve reached a sad state when prime sluggers such as David Ortiz and Ryan Howard are essentially left with two potential modes of attack: bunt or bop one out of the yard. When Ortiz merely puts the ball in play, he’s a .244 hitter, as a lopsided infield stifles his productivity. Brian McCann, another slugger on which opposing teams deploy dramatic shifts, has a .247 batting average in balls in play, whilst Chris Davis is a hair worse at .245.

These startling numbers tell there own tale: premier hitters who rank amongst the best of their generation are being humiliated by defensive paradigms which differ greatly from the traditional norm of baseball, a 150-year old game.

Surely, the deployment of four or five players on the right side of an infield contravenes everything we know about baseball. When a shortstop appears in medium-deep right field, or a third baseman shades more towards first than second, it makes a mockery of positions and, by extension, devalues all that has come before.

It’s complicated. It’s disrespectful. It’s deeply unfair.

It’s also potentially dangerous. I watch many games where managers utilise so-called ‘roving’ fielders up-the-middle, directly in the batters line of vision. If said hitter fails to see the white baseball against the light jersey of an opponent, his health could be severely compromised, a set of sorry circumstances nobody wants to experience.

Since the days of Walter Johnson and Smokey Joe Wood until very recently, baseball was a game which prized itself, more than any other, on allowing one man a fit and proper opportunity to beat another. Unlike football, you cannot conserve possession in baseball, nor can you freeze the clock. It’s supposed to be a good, honest duel between prideful athletes.

We must return to those values by instituting an ‘illegal defense’ rule or, at the very least, legislating use of the overzealous over-shift.