Baseball just outlawed the shift, and people opposed to that will always lament “why can’t they hit it where the shift isn’t?”
Obviously, even for professional hitters, this is hard. Why is that? Does it have to do with the pitch type and pitch location? If not that, is it something else other than batter handedness and tendencies?
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Defense shifts factor in hundreds if not thousands of at-bat sample size and advanced analytics. Certain guys just have a tendency to hit the ball certain ways more often due to their stance, body type, swing mechanics, where they stand in the batter’s box, lot of things.
It’s hard to just change your hitting method after decades of muscle memory and training. Most shifts accommodate a guy ‘pulling’ the ball, which I guess is more natural than pushing it opposite field (lefty hitting it left, righty hitting it right).
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