Wednesday, July 9, 2014

When will batters who insist on hitting into the teeth of the shift suffer financially?

At some point dumb batters will start being paid less because they refuse to adapt.  But how long will that take.  In my previous post I asked:

Shift fear up the chain of command: why are general managers afraid to order their managers to order their batters to bunt against the shift?

So when?  There's no sign of it.  General managers and managers are complicit.  We fans, too, for not realizing that any major league batter has the innate ability to bunt into a large unoccupied part of the playing area and that is much easier than waiting for the batter to change his style.  All I hear are dumb comments from fans to that suggestion:

1. Well, the batter could try hitting the other way.
2. Some batters cannot bunt.
3. Bunting requires more skill than you think.

Responses to dumb comments:

1. Bunting is much easier than changing a pull hitter into a spray hitter.
2. If a player can swing and hit the ball, the player can much more easily NOT swing, hold the bat still and hit the ball.
3. Yes, bunting against a regular alignment of fielders requires skill but not dumping the ball into the ocean of empty territory available due to the extreme shift.

Maybe fans should also suffer financially.

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