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Wednesday, July 13, 2022
The Florida State League will limit defensive shifts by drawing chalk lines in a pie shape from second base to the outfield grass starting July 22, prohibiting infielders from the marked area prior to the pitch in an experiment that could increase offense.
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.
The experiment in the Class A FSL was first reported by The Athletic and confirmed by MLB on Tuesday.
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1. salvomania Posted: July 13, 2022 at 11:43 AM (#6086497)Why not prohibit outfielders from playing within 100 feet of an outfield wall? That would certainly increase offense.
Since time eternal, fielders have positioned themselves based on who is batting and where they thought the batter was most likely to hit the ball. If the batter doesn't like it, they can try to go the other way, or bunt.
Rather than change the fundamentals of how the game is played, why not just tweak the ball (which has been done numerous times) to make it harder to hit it a long distance? If right now a team accepts hitting into the shift because every fifth fly ball (or whatever) a guy hits goes over the fence, would they modify their approach if it was every 10th fly ball?
The Atlantic League trialed this rule a few seasons ago, and if I recall, this exact situation game up basically the first game...the 2nd baseman played in the shallow OF on a lefty pull hitter and it was deemed illegal, and all 4 infielders had to be on the dirt at the time the pitch was released (that was how I remember it being worded - though that same literal interpretation would seem to preclude a bunt defense too.)
Don't forget the "Cool Carl" Karansky shift!
They could, but they generally didn't. Like strikeouts, and batters pitching, shifting was fun when it was rather rare. It's annoying when it happens all the time.
I found a diagram on this APBA message board.. That diagram basically extended the baselines thru second base to the outfield grass. So the line from first base to second base just kept going till it hit the LF grass. The line from third base to second base just keeps running straight thru the bag till it hits the RF grass.
Basically, the pie piece is there to give back the "single up the middle".
And then Manfred should put a bulls-eye target at the dirt line behind 2B and any line drive hitting the center is an automatic double and a zombie runner on first automatically scores, because why not?
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