David Ortiz: Shifts are making baseball less fun

It may not surprise you to learn that David Ortiz doesn’t like defensive shifts.

The Boston Red Sox icon weighed in on the increasingly common practice on Sunday, and he thinks it took 500 hits away from him. It’s enough to make him feel for some of the lefty hitters who have to deal with it now, and he thinks it’s making the game less fun.

David Ortiz says he may have had 500 hits taken away by the shifts and feels for Bryce Harper, saying it’s taken some of the fun part of the game away

— Bob Nightengale (@BNightengale) July 15, 2018

Ortiz will probably find a fair bit of support for his position, including from one prominent agent who has a stake in seeing his players do well financially. However, Ortiz is actually a great argument for why the shift isn’t necessarily the end of productive lefty hitters. He hit over .300 in four of his final six MLB seasons, all while being shifted for the majority of them.