A slow bleed has been happening in Major League Baseball. Since 2012, total yearly attendance has dwindled from 74,859,268 fans to 68,506,896 in 2019. The lost revenue comes at a costly time for many teams, as the average team payroll skyrocketed from $98,336,416 to $133,327,569 in the same time span. Many fans are turning away from the game due to the increasingly slow pace of play. In 2012, the average length of an MLB game was exactly three hours. In 2019, that number sat at three hours and ten minutes. Over the course of a 162 game regular season, as well as a lengthy postseason, and you can imagine how many much time it could take to stay dedicated to an MLB team these days.
Since it knows that it has a problem, Major League Baseball tried to take steps over the past couple of seasons to alleviate the issues. From limiting the amount of mound visits per game to cutting down on the time a manager has after a play to make a challenge, these efforts have hardly worked. The game time during the 2020 season, a season which had the disadvantage of a global pandemic keeping fans completely out of the ballpark, saw a game time of three hours and six minutes.
To see the real issue behind the slow bleed that’s plaguing the game, all you have to do is look at the field during the course of the game. The infielders, who for so long stayed in the vicinity of their assigned position, are lining up in weird spots. Increased analytics that predict the tendencies of hitters have now led to an increase in the shift being utilized. Instead of spreading the infielders out evenly across the diamond, it is now common to see multiple infielders on one side to prevent base hits. What used to be reserved for extreme pull hitters such as David Ortiz is now commonplace for many power hitters in the game, like Joey Gallo.
In addition to longer games, the shift has caused multiple ripples in the game. Since the shift has been geared mostly to power hitters, there has been a transition to more of an all or nothing style of play. Take for example the case of Peter Alonso. Alonso is a dynamic player that took the league by storm during the 2019 season, smashing the record for home runs hit by a rookie in a single season. According to Mike Axisa, during that season, teams employed the shift against Alonso in 25% of his at-bats, to which Alonso responded with a .304 average. When the opponents ramped it up a notch in the 2020 season and shifted against Alonso 38.1%, Alonso didn’t react well, stroking just a .231 average.
While the game should not cater to its start players, it certainly shouldn’t allow aspects of the game to hinder players as well. The fact of the matter is that fans want to see power hitters like Alonso succeed, not put them in situations to fail. Not only does it hinder the performance of sluggers, but it also adds time onto the game. As the shift has been used more often, the average time of a game has increased as well. In 2010, when the average game time was 2 hours and 54 minutes, the Tampa Bay Rays shifted a total of 221 times. In 2020, when the game time was three hours and six minutes, and they played sixty regular season games, the Rays shifted a total of 731 times.
Not only is shifting a problem seen by fans, but by players as well. Francisco Lindor, one of the most exciting players on the field and at the plate, recently told Tom Verducci of Sports Illustrated about his frustrations with it.
“The shift has got to be cut down,” he says. “Let me do me. Let me make the crazy play. Let me be like, ‘O.K., he’s going to pull the ball. I can’t be on that side of the base.’ So as the pitch goes, I run on the other side of the base—pow!—and make the play.”
Francisco Lindor wants to save baseball, one smile at a time.
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Baseball will have a rare opportunity to bring fans back to the ballpark as the COVID-19 Pandemic begins to slowly recede. They are an outdoor event that people will be able to watch games comfortably in, which fits the needs of a population that is thirsty to be social. They can’t miss the opportunity to win fans back. To get on the right track to do so, Major League Baseball absolutely needs to abolish the shift.