The only reason there are baseball defensive positions is because they offered the best odds of covering the bases to make outs and the most even distribution across the field in general. I doubt that ‘second baseman’ or ‘shortstop’ even appear in the rules. Tradition and common sense do not always dictate location on the diamond.
If a team wanted to array 7 fielders within 30 ft of home plate to catch a bunt that would be entirely kosher as long as they’re within the foul lines.
The issue, as always, is that the players don’t like having their liabilities exposed. As one baseball writer noted recently, a team shifted and dared the hitter simply to make contact to the opposite field over 17 pitches or so and the major leaguer couldn’t do it. How can that be the fault of the defense who exposed fully half the infield?
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Excellent post!
http://mlb.mlb.com/documents/0/8/0/268272080/2018_Official_Baseball_Rules.pdf
Shortstop appears six times.
First Baseman once (Rules for First Baseman’s glove are different than other positions.)
Catcher 166 times. (If a catcher were not required, teams would simply use the catcher as another fielder, unless there were two strikes or three balls, or both. A pitch hitting a batter is a dead ball.)
Pitcher 472 times.
Before the “free pass” intentional walk rule, fielders had to be in there “normal positions” during an intentional walk, or a balk would be called. Otherwise a manager would have two outfielders backing up the catcher, further slowing the game down.
Not only are you correct, but the shortstop used to actually play in front of the other basement. That’s why he’s called the shortstop. When preventing hard hit balls for making into the outfield became more important than scooping up hunts in dead ball hits is shortstop was repositioned to be parallel to the second baseman