In January 2015, during his first public interview as baseball’s commissioner, Rob Manfred floated the idea of banning the defensive shift. In doing so, he earned his first significant brush with controversy.
In the years since the commissioner first suggested banning the strategy, it’s only grown more common—and more contentious. In 2015, teams shifted their infielders on 9.4% of pitches; in 2018, that number has risen to 17.5%. Broaden that to include any defensive positioning that MLB’s Statcast categorizes as “strategic,” even if it’s not conventional, and you’re looking at shifts on more than a quarter of this season’s pitches, versus less than a fifth in 2015.