Commentary: Pull-happy hitters win, strategy loses in MLB’s shift banning

Good news for those who want less strategy in the game: Major League Baseball announced Friday that it would be banning defensive shifts starting with the 2023 season.

This comes one year after the sport added the designated hitter to the National League, effectively eliminating one of the most enjoyable mid-game discussion topics about when a manager would pinch-hit for a pitcher who is dealing.

But enough of that. Baseball has a new mid-game activity to enjoy: gambling.

Like every other professional sports league in this country, MLB jumped into bed with the gambling companies .

Which team wins and how they do it seems to become less important in baseball every year.

Eliminate how teams use their defensive players and now we can have more control over projected outcomes.

As if MLB hasn’t grown tired from manipulating the game after purchasing the Rawlings baseball manufacturing plant and hand-delivering particular baseballs that will fly better or worse, depending on the nightly matchup.

There are several problems with banning the shift, of course, but perhaps the most concerning one is that it doesn’t actually level the playing field for the offense.

It levels the playing field for one particular subset of hitters: the left-handed, pull-hitting, power hitter who misses the center of the ball too frequently and instead hits the top half of the ball, sending it towards the right side of the infield where three or four guys are waiting for it.

If your name is Joey Gallo, congratulations, you just won a couple dozen singles.

What’s this do for the best hitters in the game? The guys who actually taught themselves how to hit to all fields, who developed into complete players who can turn on a fastball or wait on a breaking ball, the Dustin Pedroia’s and Christian Vazquez’s of the world who know how to shoot the ball to a particular side when it’s time to advance a base runner — these are the guys who get nothing out of the deal.

Those who argue for banning the shift often say it’s just a slight correction to produce more activity in the game. Launch angle has ruined the game, they’ll say. And because of that, we need to make sure there’s more contact.

But launch angle was a natural evolution, just as the shift was. Pitchers started throwing harder than ever before and one way to combat the velocity was putting the ball in the air and letting it fly.

Why doesn’t MLB ban pitches over 98 mph, then?

If Rob Manfred thinks turning 500 outs a year into 500 singles is actually going to convince more young people to tune into Sunday Night Baseball on ESPN, he’s going to be severely disappointed.

It’s not like there are one or two teams consistently beating everybody else because they’ve mastered the shift.

This year, four of the top-10 shifting teams are in line to make the playoffs as of Friday, while six of the bottom-10 shifting teams are in postseason position.

We can now go back to statue defenders, second basemen who don’t need to cover much ground and third basemen with less range and athleticism.

The other rule changes Manfred announced on Friday actually make sense without manipulating the game for one specific group of players.

Adding a pitch clock and increasing the size of the bases by 3 inches makes the game faster and safer.

We’ll get a better game in some ways in 2023, but we’re losing strategy and adding ridiculousness, as umpires now will have to make sure both feet of every infielder are touching the dirt, only two defenders are on each side of second base.

Outfield shifts? They can stay.

Why? Who knows? The baseball gods said so.