Image credit: IMAGE IMAGES via Reuters Connect
On the 6th of October Ericus Longenhagen of FanGraphs reported on a phenomenon that he and his colleague Brendan Gawlowski first noticed in Arizona Fall League games: Outfielders would line up in a surprising, and strangely symmetrical, fashion. After promising to team officials and the league, MLB was able to implement, in fact, the idea of restricting the outfield positions, in an effort to increase the number of bases on balls hit to the grass.
The AFL is no stranger to experimentation; many new concepts from the league are being played in the backfields. The pitch clock and ABS system first saw the light there; The challenge system will undoubtedly reach the major leagues once fans work through some 50-50 calls in October. Perhaps most fittingly, the AFL’s nascent infield migration ban, which came into effect in 2023, has seen an inexplicable source of consternation, and is now generally withdrawn compared to other recent rule changes.
Russell Carleton devoted no small amount of energy to making these pages after the death of the infield migration, and his conclusions were so clear and correct: a lot has been done almost nothing. Few people miss the change, but also, few people know the impact that the ban has made on the game, because it is not a real impact. The location of the infielders had almost no effect on how hitters approached their strategy, because their strategy never involved the infielders in the first place. Fights are said to be uplifting and to celebrate, or at least to focus on the beloved Ted Williams line and allow themselves short and serious little Ted Williams smirks. When they had obtained this, the mediator could not interfere, wherever he stood.
If the shift is a sign of a bigger problem, it was an ugly sign. He failed in both: He took away the hits by planting the grass, he felt he deserved it, while he rolled through the empty deeds where the farmers should have been hit, and he felt cheap. But his biggest crime wasn’t the balls he put back in the score box. The result was that he didn’t do anything (against left-handed hitters, at least). This was a dominant strategy in a game that thrives on mixed strategies. A flashy shift, so bold, designed in a lab that it would drive Little League dads and traditionalists crazy. He answered only to strike, to strike the opposite side, to take what the defense was giving. And for years we have all ravished the Gauls of the world for the joy of throwing them at the fortifications with their backs open.