Sliiiiiide the left, sliiiiiide to the right....
If you have danced the Cha-Cha Slide, you have essentially performed a baseball shift. Sliding fielder position to the left, right, or “taking it back now (y’all)” when a batter like Giancarlo Stanton comes to the plate has become an increasingly common practice around the league. Despite declining to shift for many years, the Miami Marlins recently embraced the trend.
The shift is a defensive strategy in which fielder position is adjusted in response to a specific batter.