David Schoenfield, ESPN Senior Writer 9y

Manfred sort of backs off banning shifts

So it was big news the other day when commissioner Rob Manfred told Karl Ravech the sport should considering banning defensive shifts to help inject more offense into the game. The idea was widely criticized but now, in an interview with Ken Rosenthal, Manfred has backtracked a bit from his original suggestion.

But you know ... maybe it wasn't such a crazy idea to begin with, although I'll still point out that shifts explain only a small percentage in the drop in the offense. Consider:

Chris is correct. The NBA used to have a rule banning zone defense. I assume this was done for two reasons: (1) So your big shot-blocker couldn't just stand in the key and protect the rim; (2) So you couldn't double-team away from the ball, keeping the ball out of the hands of the superstar players. The NBA got rid of that version of illegal defense in 2001 but still has the defensive three-second rule, in which a player on the defensive team cannot spend more than three seconds in the lane without actively guarding an opponent. This helps keep the lane open, in particular helping point guards who have the ability to drive the lane and score or pass. (I'm told the NBA has become a point-guard oriented league these days, between their ability to drive the lane and kick out to 3-point shooters.)

Anyway, I still wouldn't like a ban on shifts but there is some precedent for limiting defensive alignments, at least in basketball.

Related, Russell Carleton of Baseball Prospectus had an interesting piece titled, "Why Saber-Savvy Teams May Might Want a Shift Ban." In the piece, Russell cites two tweets from Yahoo's Jeff Passan, who wrote that two sabermetrically inclined general managers told him they were in favor of a ban. "Both essentially said same thing," Jeff tweeted. "The game is better when the casual fans gets the product they want. Big concern baseball isn't delivering."

Russell adds,

The thing about the infield shift is that while it is innovative, easy to implement, and saves a few runs over the course of a season, it’s rather easy to spot what the early adopters are doing and copy it. That’s the innovator’s curse. You take the risk and put all the hard work in to come up with something new and people just copy it if it works. When shifts were done by a couple of teams, they were a cute novelty. Now everyone does it and would be fools not to do it. There’s no more relative advantage to shifting any more when everyone else is doing and it makes no sense for an individual team to go back to the old 2-and-2-no-matter-what system. The shift is now just part of the landscape.

Because shifts don't have a major impact on run scoring, I don't think we'll see a rule implemented. If the sport wants more offense, it still gets back to cutting down on the strikeout rates. Still, as Russell concludes, "The shift might be a bad scapegoat for declining offense, but it’s also a cautionary tale in unintended consequences. Sometimes when you press a button, it changes all of the other buttons."

^ Back to Top ^