infield shift
infield shift noun: a defensive alignment in which the third baseman, shortstop and second baseman positionally shift to their left when a left-handed batter is in the batter's box. Used primarily when the batter is an extreme pull hitter.
Noun
infield shift (plural infield shifts)
- A defensive alignment in which the third baseman, shortstop and second baseman positionally shift to their left when a left-handed batter is in the batter's box. Used primarily when the batter is an extreme pull hitter.
Forms of infield shift
| plural | infield shifts |
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Origin of infield shift
From infield and shift. Originally called the Williams shift or Boudreau shift, respectively named for Ted Williams and Lou Boudreau, and first used during the 1946 World Series by St. Louis Cardinals manager Eddie Dyer as a defensive gimmick. In the late 1990s, the strategy was revived, using the more generic infield shift, which has been used exclusively since then.
Questions about infield shift
- What does infield shift mean?
- Infield shift means a defensive alignment in which the third baseman, shortstop and second baseman positionally shift to their left when a left-handed batter is in the batter's box. Used primarily when the batter is an extreme pull hitter.
- What part of speech is infield shift?
- Infield shift is a noun.
- What is the plural of infield shift?
- The plural of infield shift is infield shifts.
Words near infield shift in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: infield shift (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this entry: “infield shift.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/infield_shift. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.