• Major League Baseball is back on the field with a whole new set of regulations designed to improve the game. So far the early evidence suggests games are going quicker, and to be sure if baseball got any slower it would start competing with farming for action and excitement. The pitch clock provokes a shrug. I imagine pitchers and batters will adapt well enough.
The ban on the shift—placing all four infielders on one side of the field, with the second baseman or shortstop 25 yards or more in the outfield—is another matter. I hate the shift, but I also think it should have prompted the obvious adaptation: left-handed pull hitters should start learning to hit to the opposite field, or, failing that, bunting along the third base line. Last year I think there were more than one bunts for doubles against the shift. But the macro incentives for batters is to swing for the fences, so even with the shift taking away a lot of singles it still seemed better to keep swinging for dingers.
The problem with the ban on the shift is that, like all regulations, clever people find a way around it. The Red Sox found a way in spring training by moving their left fielder into shallow right field, which doesn’t break the anti-shift rule, which only applies to the four infield positions. Even more reason for a left-handed pull hitter to spend time in the batting cage learning to hit opposite field; there’s a likelihood that someone could hit an inside-the-park home run by hitting to the opposite field.
Beyond baseball, this simple foiling of the anti-shift rule is a metaphor for the failure of government regulation, where clever lawyers and accountants will always find a loophole, exception, or perverse application of a rule, which leads inevitably to more regulation, and more perverse results. Just ask your local bank these days. Wasn’t Dodd-Frank supposed to save us from banking problems for good?
• Gee—I wonder why crime has been rising in Washington DC:
D.C. U.S. attorney declined to prosecute 67% of those arrested
As the District grapples with rising crime and increasing attention from federal lawmakers over public safety issues, a startling statistic emergedin recent weeks.
Last year, federal prosecutors in the District’s U.S. attorney’s office chose not to prosecute 67 percent of those arrested bypolice officers in cases that would have beentried in D.C. Superior Court.
That figure,first reported earlier this month on the substack DC Crime Facts, nearly doubledfrom 2015, when prosecutors in the U.S. attorney’s office declined to prosecute 35 percent of such cases.
Back in the 1960s, one of Gov. Ronald Reagan’s favorite lines was “A liberal’s idea of being tough on crime is giving longer suspended sentences.” Today’s liberals have figured out that if you don’t charge someone in the first place, it works even better.
• For the prog rock cognoscenti:
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