Three years later how do you feel about banning the infield shift?

There have been a bunch of rule changes instituted in MLB recently. Some have been an outstanding success, like the pitch clock. Some have been quasi-disasters, like the extra-innings rule. Some it’s too soon to tell, like with the ABS challenge system. And then there’s the one that you don’t hear discussed much at all – banning the shift that puts three fielders on one side of the second-base bag. There were a couple of stated reasons for banning the shift, chief among them that it would bring more offense into the game. But has that really happened?

Today, MLB’s rule changes are hailed as a resounding success for the sport. Game times are down. Stolen bases are up. Even strikeout rates have flattened.

Yet restricting the infield shift did not bring back the base hit. In 2026, league-wide batting average remains at its lowest point for position players in the Modern Era (.243) and batting average on balls in play (.291) is up only one point from 2022.

By the numbers, MLB’s hitting crisis continues.

But if the game looks more normal, does anyone care?

Source: Stephen J. Nesbitt and Cody Stavenhagen, The Athletic

It never mattered to me how the game “looked” in this instance. It’s not like putting ads on the uniform. My thoughts on the shift were that once the defense adjusted, it was up to the hitters to do the same. And that simply meant more bunting and more hitting to the opposite field. Yet 99% of the hitters refused to do that.

Generally speaking, the bunt is not my favorite strategy. But it’s about giving away outs, rather than using it as a way to get a hit. While he was far, far from my favorite player, Frank Taveras made excellent use of the push bunt. And Brett Butler was an excellent bunter, in many different ways, too. Shoot, there was even Todd Frazier and the slug bunt. Hitters had all of these weapons available to them and for the most part, they simply refused to utilize them. Why reward them for their stubbornness?

How many times have we wished that players like Francisco Alvarez and Mark Vientos hit the other way, rather than trying to pull every pitch that comes their way? How often do Brett Baty and Carson Benge get praised when they go to the opposite field?

My preference with rule changes is to address things beyond the offense or defense’s control. The pitch clock is a success because pitchers couldn’t make hitters get into the box, while hitters couldn’t make pitchers throw the ball. Now we don’t have that problem.

Replay and the ABS are steps in the right direction, because they give clubs a way to get calls reversed, again something that without the rules, neither the offense or defense could do anything to change the outcome. While the challenge nature of these rule changes doesn’t exactly thrill me, getting more calls right is always better than fewer calls. It’s a case of not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.

I’m torn on the three-batter rule. As someone who hated the proliferation of LOOGY’s, it’s good to see teams no longer carrying two of them on their roster. Yet at the end of the day, teams – even if not the Mets – were moving away from this deployment strategy on their own, with no rule necessary. Ultimately, my take here is that while this rule was less than ideal, it didn’t make the game worse.

Does banning the shift make the game worse? It seems this is a question upon which reasonable people can disagree. Speaking only for myself, the thing that seemed bad was infielders going back and forth on the diamond due to the count. But the pitch clock would have mitigated that some. Also, they could have made it so the defense would have to declare what it was going to do for the at-bat, like when a runner is on third and the pitcher has to declare if he’s going to use the wind-up or pitch from the stretch.

As a fan of strategy in the game, my preference is to embrace teams that try different things. Some things will work, while others will fail. And even things that work initially won’t always work once teams adjust. The game seeking its own equilibrium is part of the beauty of it, in my estimation.

Sometimes the game needs a push, like with the pitch clock. It’s my opinion that banning the shift was not a push that was necessary. And seeing that it hasn’t had the desired effect of adding more offense to the game only makes it worse.