Why do some changes in sports end up being considered cheating, and others innovation? Let's look at some historical examples for patterns.
In baseball, "the shift" is a strategy in which
defensive players deviate, or ‘shift’ from the default locations for their
positions to locations closer to where they expect the ball to land. This
practice has had a measurable statistical effect on the game; hits other than
home runs have become rarer, and the hits that do happen are more often singles
compared to seasons before 2010. The shift is simply data-driven strategy and
yet the practice is still controversial.
It seems like such an arbitrary thing to call out as unfair