By: Francisco (FC)

We're going in circles here. You're just repeating what you said above without acknowledging my input at all. <b>Ryan Howard is a pull hitter</b>. He will consistently pull the ball to get his power stroke, that's not going to change. Hence, the vast majority of his hit balls will fall to the right side, <b>he's not going to get singles with enough regularity towards left field to cause a change in defense</b>. You cannot change the way you fundamentally bat at the plate between swings or at bats. Either he becomes a spray hitter with the consequent loss of power, or he continues to mash at the plate, going primarily for doubles and home runs. The occasional single to left will happen as he gets a small piece of a fastball on a late swing, but don't pretend he can actually do this on purpose with any sort of frequency that will cause a cessation of the shift. In any case it is rare to find a hitter that will consistently hit the spread the ball evenly throughout the diamond. All players have certain tendencies to hit the ball at certain spots. All teams are wising up to these stats and use them ruthlessly to prevent hits. The only thing at this point that Howard would accomplish is to get a different shift that will likely flummox him as often as the current one does. The only way the shift stops is with folks on base. <blockquote>In summation, if he can hit singles to left, you can’t say ‘oh we’ll still stack the right to prevent singles to right, but you can have all the singles to left you want’ if even 1/4 of his singles goto left.</blockquote> For his career about 15% of his balls in play have ended up towards left field, 3% have resulted in hits (we're not counting opposite field home runs, which account for nearly half his hit total towards left field). 25% is a tall order, unrealistic to achieve in my opinion.