The defensive shift has been executed in baseball since its conception. Why should a ban on the concept emerge just now— over 150 years after baseball’s invention? And I know I sound like some conservative fan who hates any sort of change, but it’s true. As Fred Lynn responded when Joey Gallo complained about hitting against the shift, “They shifted against Ted Williams and didn’t he hit .406?”
The facts
The first fact about the application of the shift in recent years is that it has been disproportionately applied based on the handedness of batters.