Talk Shift, Back It Up

We've been talking a lot of shift to other baseball fans over the changes that were made to the rules of Major League Baseball in 2023.  The addition of a pitch clock is stupid.  Making the bases bigger is gonna give us more action on the base paths just like our partners will once we get married.  Married people all know as their partners bases get bigger it only makes it more difficult for them to be traveled on.  The anti-shift rule won't add up to more hits.  Turns out we were wrong on 2 of 3.  Good news is, batting 1 for 3 still gets us a chance at the Hall of Fame if we keep up those numbers for another 15 years or so.  

Being on the clock has noticeably and positively impacted the speed of the game.  Most notably the time to complete a baseball game has decreased by nearly half an hour.  In 2022 the average game time was 3 hours 4 minutes.  In 2023 the pitch clock was instituted and the average game time dropped to 2 hours 42 minutes.  Almost 30 minutes shorter!  It got even shorter in 2024 when the average was 2 hours 36 minutes.  What a dramatic shift from a game that droned on and on full of pitching changes every batter to... well less droning and more throwing. 

There is a place where you can steal openly in front of thousands of people and be applauded for it.  That is, of course, on the baseball field.  In 2022 there were 2487 stolen bases in MLB.  In 2023 after the increase in size of base, the pitch clock, and a limit to the number of disengagements the number of stolen bases increased to 3503!  That's nearly a 41% increase.  As far as action on the bases go we haven't seen an increase like that since our single days when we finally hit that 3rd date.  This steals a little bit more time away from checking our phone because we know someone could be on the run on any pitch.  These rule changes significantly improved the watchability and action of a baseball game.  The anti-shift however, has not had the same impact.

Players are now required to stay on the infield orange and must be on their assigned side of the midline of the ball field.  Before 2023 you were allowed to position your players however you like.  You could play all players on one side of the field if you were looking to exploit dead pull hitters.  Excluding the pitcher and catcher of course.  The pitcher is required to deliver the ball while touching the rubber (the rubber on the mound you pervs!) and the catcher has to stay inside the catchers box until something happens after the pitch is thrown. The rest of the players were welcome to roam the space freely.  Although, the remaining 7 players did not all congregate in left field because strategically that would be a hilarious disaster.  An unattended space in the field would be ripe for exploitation by a skilled batter.  This however has seemingly not been the case.  Multiple batters over the last few years have been found to continually pull the ball a significant amount of the time despite more players being positioned to that side of the field... amazingly some still found success.  

We will give you the starkest example: In 2021-2022 Jose Altuve, which many consider one of the better hitters in the game, had an pull percentage of 53%.  Small man with big pull energy.  (according to fangraphs Baseball Data)  Not only that he hit it to center field 31% of the time leaving a paltry 15% chance he would hit it to the opposite field.  The defense should adjust its fielding setup to guard against his overwhelming tendency to pull the ball and play more fielders towards his pull side.  They did and instead of him adjusting his approach to hit it to where the fielders were now absent he just continued to pull the ball until MLB stepped in to restrict the fielders choice on where to position.  The offensive minded MLB thought this would give some of the best hitters more hits instead of forcing the batters to adjust, you restrict the fielders positioning.  Did this work?  The proof is in the batting average.  

Batting average is simply (number of hits)/(number of at bats.)  (Yes, we are aware some at bats dont count as at bats... as weird as that is to say.)  This basic formula is an easy measure to test and see if the shift restriction worked then we should see a significant increase in batting average.  Can you tell which year the change was implemented?  (Baseball Reference Stats) 2020: .245 2021: .244  2022: .243  2023: .248 2024: .243  2025: (so far) .246.  Yes, you knew it was 2023 but only because 2023 was the year when sweeping changes were implemented and we've primed your brain to see it.  Other than that these numbers across 4800 games played in a season are amazingly consistent over 5+ seasons.  They seem to represent a basic shift in approach to hitting regardless of where players are shifted in the field.  We like to call this approach "hit ball hard."  

Hit ball hard approach gives the best chance for a player to hit a home run and home runs are good, but it also increases your chance to miss ball.  Miss ball equals strike out.  In 2024 strikeouts per game was an average of 8.48 versus 2014 it was 7.7 versus 2004 it was 6.55.  This batting approach of hit ball hard combined with the pitching approach of throw ball fast equals player miss ball a lot.  (Throw ball fast also equals other things like player hurts arm, player throws less, no single pitcher completes game, no single pitcher no hitters, no perfect games, etc.)

How do we suggest improving the hitting portion of the game?  How about limit the number of pitchers your allowed to carry?  Or, how about you're only allowed to have 2 pitching changes the entire game?  How about moving the pitching rubber back 1-2 feet?  How about reducing the height of the pitching mound? Maybe make the bat bigger?  Instead of torpedo bats bring allow players to use bats the size of those old giant red whiffle ball bats.  

Welcome to the future past.  Baseball is the game of nostalgia but also desperately wants be relevant to current events.  These new fandangle computation machines have found a way to track a ball and measure its location in the strike zone to less than one quarter of an inch.  That is super impressive.  It is so impressive that an umpires accuracy is measured against this computer measuring device for accuracy.  Yes, you read that correctly.  The computer is the default correct measuring device not the umpire.  The human umpire is deemed to be not as accurate as the computer.  Human umpires are very good (sometimes excluding some special guys cough.angelhernandez.cough) at calling balls and strikes right about 95% of the time.  The computer is considered correct 100% of the time.  So, the MLB has decided to take away all doubt of the balls and strikes and use the ABS (automated ball strike) system.  Nice work MLB coming into the new age!  Skkrrrtttt...they slammed on the brakes on that idea.  The MLB will only use it if a player challenges?!  Also, each team only gets 2 challenges? They wont use the system the entire time to get the call exactly right the first time?  So, we're not sure why the MLB wants to pump the brakes on its ABS system.  It prefers pitches to be called wrong and see if anyone corrects the bad call, rather than just using the system to get it right all the time?  Wow, that seems just really, really dumb.  

We're gonna challenge this call before the pitch is even thrown.  We predict they will be using the system like they should to call all balls and strikes by 2028.  Of course, we've been wrong before but we're pretty confident this will get our batting average up to .500 making us 2 for 4.  Solid showing for a hacker.