Whydun t1_j9yw318 wrote on February 25, 2023 at 4:12 PM

Reply to comment by squeevey in ELI5 What is the "Shift ban" in Major League Baseball and why are people upset about it? by lokigodofchaos

Can hitters not control where they hit? Seems more sporting to let the shift happen and let people adapt to the skills required to exploit the shift.

squeevey t1_j9yxmeb wrote on February 25, 2023 at 4:23 PM

For what they pay then you'd think so. But the reality is, they are trying to hit a small sphere with a small cylinder. If they swing too early the ball goes one way, if they swing too late it goes the other way. So as a batter, you need to have your timing just right. But then you have to contend with the pitcher changing the speed at which the ball travels. That's just to make sure you're hitting to one side of the field or not.

THEN you have to control the bat where it HITS the ball above or below the axis of the ball. One makes it pop up, the other makes it go down.

Now that I'm thinking about this I'd love to see Boston Dynamics build a batting robot. Maybe a whole team!

theicon77 t1_j9z0h3h wrote on February 25, 2023 at 4:42 PM

Yes the good ones can. The problem is owners don’t pay for slap hitters to the opposite field. They pay for guys that can drive the ball. So over time more and more players are trying to drive the ball to get the large contracts. Eventually you don’t have players trying to go the opposite way because it is not in their financial interest.

ThisOneForMee t1_ja02dbq wrote on February 25, 2023 at 8:54 PM

Making great hitters settle for bunt singles is still advantageous for the defense

st1r t1_j9yym6g wrote on February 25, 2023 at 4:29 PM

Just making contact with a major league pitch is already incredibly hard to do

Making solid, hard contact is even harder

Many players do hit to both sides so they don’t get shifted by the defense, but many also focus on hitting it as hard as possible which means you give up some control over where the ball goes. The trend over the past couple decades has been to focus on hitting the ball as hard as you can rather than focusing on hitting it to a specific area of the field because the stats have shown that to be more effective.

If you’re hitting for power then you’ll naturally swing a little earlier on average because your bat speeds up through the swing, so if you hit the ball a little earlier you will hit it harder. But then it will also have the tendency to go in one direction. So a lot of power hitters tend to hit the ball to the same side of the field like 90% of the time. Batters who do this are often the best batters on their teams. Thus the defense shifts in order to limit the effectiveness of that batter.