What if baseball banned The Shift?



We don’t ask that question because we’re looking for clicks. We don’t even ask it because we’re trying to get invited to the potentially epic End of the Shift party at Matt Carpenter’s house. We ask because it feels, all of a sudden, as though that could be a real possibility.



We know, first off, that this is going to be a big winter in baseball’s never-ending quest for more action and better pace. We also know that support for that Kill the Shift idea starts at the top.



Just check out a collection of Rob Manfred’s Greatest Shift Quotes sometime. The commissioner has been contemplating “eliminating shifts” since the week he took the job back in 2015. And now, we’re hearing, support for that idea is building.



At last month’s owners meetings, baseball’s competition committee gave the commissioner “strong” backing to try to “put...