Major League Baseball has plenty to sort out to ensure that the 2022 season will start on time, but once a new CBA is finally agreed upon, there are plenty of other aspects to the game that many want to see changed.
One of those in-game issues is the shift, which has become such a focal point of the game that some would like to see it restricted.
One of the advocates for limiting the shift is one of the league’s biggest victims to the strategy in Yankees outfielder Joey Gallo.
“I get the defensive strategies,” Gallo told The Athletic. “I do. I’m 100 percent not against that. But I think at some point, you have to fix the game a little bit.
I mean, I don’t understand how I’m supposed to hit a double or triple when I have six guys standing in the outfield.”
Gallo, who hit 62 percent of his ground balls and 59 percent of his line drives to the pull side last season, lost the third-most would-be hits in the league last season due to the shift, a total of 59, according to The Athletic. Known as one of the most pull-dominant hitters in the game, Gallo has seen teams deploy four outfielders against him, like the Tigers did last summer. He believes at least a change in that department would be a good start.
“You can still shift, but you can’t put multiple guys in the outfield,” Gallo told The Athletic. “At the end of the day, I think extra-base hits are important. And line drives to the outfield should be hits.”
Among qualified hitters last season, Gallo posted the sixth-lowest BABIP in the league last season, per FanGraphs, and for a hitter who also led the league in strikeouts and walks, balls in play are coveted. But singles and doubles have been consistently swallowed up by shifts, as nearly 25,000 more balls were hit into the shift last season compared to just three years ago. Gallo says he is not alone in believing that trend shouldn’t continue.
“I think most hitters are pretty adamant on the shift, that they have to do something with it,” Gallo said. “I don’t really see many hitters going, ‘The shift is pretty awesome, man. They need to keep that.’ I think people understand that hitting is hard enough, but when you have guys standing in different positions where it makes it almost impossible to get hits, that makes it even harder, obviously.”
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