Sport must continue to evolve, not look back
McCovey also served as a recipient of it — and of course is far more prominent nowadays. I’ve never understood the hatred of this. How is it any different than playing the infield in, or utilizing the wheel play on a bunt?
To ban the shift altogether would be intellectually criminal. At the least, how about considering Bobby Valentine’s proposal to limit shifts to turn it into a strategic dilemma? How about three per team per game? It’d give fans something else to first- and second-guess.
What further complicates matters is there are many innovations and cultural transformations that neither side wants to revoke. If a push exists to rely less on analytical byproducts like the shift, that won’t lessen the appetite for modern metrics like exit velocity, spin rate and catch probability, which have created an exciting entryway for many nerds (like myself) to quantify the game’s best. And let’s hope there’s no internal movement to temper the game’s more animated celebrations after a big hit or pitch, or the magnetism of someone like two-time Home Run Derby champion Pete Alonso and his widely embraced #LFGM slogan.
It’s a tightrope, right? Understood why people want more action and fewer strikeouts, which is why the crackdown on sticky stuff made sense (and allowed for the great theatrics of Max Scherzer and Joe Girardi going at it). Yet you don’t want to stifle creativity or research and development, either.
A huge offseason awaits baseball, the top priority simply keeping the doors open. Here’s hoping the two sides don’t rely too heavily on events that already happened to ensure short-term goodwill.