LAS VEGAS (AP) — dreaded shift http://www.dodgersfanproshop.com/authentic-max-muncy-jersey , and most of them have the same answer.It’s not a problem if the hitters don’t make it one.“There’s an easy way to combat that,” Oakland’s Bob Melvin said. “Just hit the ball the other way.”It’s a simple enough solution, though certainly an obvious one. Who among us, after all, hasn’t screamed at a batter to push the ball the other way or even bunt for a sure hit when the defense is loaded up on one side of the infield?The guys in the dugout surely have, even if job security dictates they do their screaming silently.“If a guy can use the whole field, they’re not going to shift you,” the Marlins’ Don Mattingly said.Unfortunately, guys don’t use the whole field anymore. They haven’t for some time because they play baseball to make money and the players who make the most money try to hit the ball as hard as they can to the place they’re most comfortable hitting it.Hitters aren’t going to adapt. There’s no real incentive for them to go the other way, even when all the numbers add up.So while managers at this week’s winter meetings talked about players adjusting to situations and shifts, their real audience is the guys in the dugout. And they, for the most part, aren’t listening.Push one down the third base line for an easy hit? You’d have better luck getting Manny Machado to hustle down to first.“The majority of the hitters Kenta Maeda Jersey , I’d say 90 to 95 percent, say to heck with it, I’m going to try to hit a homer and a double,” said Kansas City manager Ned Yost. “Our numbers for singles as a baseball league last year dropped way down. And you just lose strategy, you lose the ability to steal bases. You lose the ability to hit and run or bunt if you want to.”In other words, you’re losing a big part of baseball.The shift, if you haven’t noticed, is killing baseball. Maybe not by itself, but as part of a new analytics culture in the game that doesn’t value steals, sacrifice bunts, hit-and-runs or any kind of strategy that doesn’t always make sense when all the numbers are crunched.Major League Baseball has noticed, mainly because attendance was down last season and so were hits. Singles have been in decline for the last five years, and the league average of .248 was the worst in 46 years.Meanwhile Matt Kemp Jersey , for the first time there were more strikeouts than hits in the game, and the World Series — at least on the Dodgers‘ side — was a badly flawed microcosm of what the game has become.That’s a big reason why baseball’s competition committee is looking at doing away with the shift, a move Commissioner Rob Manfred has said he is open to considering. Though baseball tends to move slow, there’s an outside chance both the commissioner’s office and the players’ union could agree to do something about the increasing use of the shift before next season.Banning the shift, of course, won’t magically make all the problems of the game go away. It might not change much at all, if you believe the analytics that show the shift mainly takes hits away from slow left-handed power hitters.But it’s a step toward making baseball look like baseball again. And it’s a step toward being more proactive when it comes to winning back fans turned off by the slow pace of games and the interminable periods in games where nothing ever seems to happen.“I just think that shift, it makes the game much, much more boring in my opinion,” said Yost, one of the few managers to take a stand against the shift.Thankfully for baseball, there is an easy solution.Two infielders on each side of second base. Both with at least one foot on the infield dirt.You know, like baseball used to be played.The guess is that it’s likely to happen http://www.dodgersfanproshop.com/authentic-max-muncy-jersey , if only because no one but pitchers and the people in the analytics department have any love for the shift. That includes Dodgers manager Dave Roberts, who used it so much last season that at times it seemed like third baseman Justin Turner was spending more time on the other side of the second base bag than in his normal position.Roberts said he believes baseball is a better game without the shift, though for now his immediate plans are to increase the time his hitters spend hitting to the opposite field in spring training to try to combat it.Here’s hoping they won’t need that extra practice.It’s time for the shift to go. The Brewers and Dodgers played a thrilling Game 1 yesterday, with another game on tap for today. The Red Sox and Astros begin the ALCS later on Saturday night."After a division series round that was not always packed with excitement, you couldn’t have hoped for much better than the drama from the Brewers and Dodgers on Friday night. In the end the teams were separated by one run and the game ended with the tying run for LA on third base. Sure, it took four hours, but it was a fun game and the result meant that a whole lot of people in Milwaukee are going to get some free hamburgers. The National League teams are back in action this afternoon starting at about 4:00, because of course any game involving the Red Sox must be the “prime time” game. The ALCS starts at about 8:00.In fairness, that is a marquee matchup there. The Red Sox and Astros won 108 and 103 games, respectively, in the regular season. Justin Verlander is starting for the defending world champions, while Chris Sale gets the ball for Boston. That’s a couple of top-flight starting pitchers in the game right now. But still, ew http://www.angelsfanproshop.com/authentic-zack-cozart-jersey , Boston.As for the Dodgers and Brewers, it’s a bit less exciting of a matchup: Hyun-Jin Ryu for LA with Wade Miley pitching for Milwaukee. Although I know on a rational level that it’s not like Miley chose to pitch poorly in Baltimore, I can’t stop myself from taking it personally that he went elsewhere and found success. Perhaps, as Dan Duquette says, he was prevented from employing analytics that would have made Miley a good pitcher here. I know this is a real possibility - that when you get down to it, the Brewers put him in a position where he could succeed in a way that the Orioles did not. Yet it will still be annoying if I watch him dominating in the postseason for some NL team after all the times I watched him get lit up here.Anyway, here’s the starting lineup for the home team Brewers, up 1-0 in the best of seven series:Lorenzo Cain - CFChristian Yelich - RFRyan Braun - LFJesus Aguilar - 1BMike Moustakas - 3BTravis Shaw - 2BErik Kratz - COrlando Arcia - SSWade Miley - PAnd for the Dodgers:Chris Taylor - CFJustin Turner - 3BDavid Freese - 1BManny Machado - SSMatt Kemp - LFEnrique Hernandez - 2BYasiel Puig - RFAustin Barnes - CHyun-Jin Ryu - P