system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: Why is it so hard in baseball to beat the shift?

Baseball just outlawed the shift, and people opposed to that will always lament “why can’t they hit it where the shift isn’t?” 

Obviously, even for professional hitters, this is hard. Why is that? Does it have to do with the pitch type and pitch location? If not that, is it something else other than batter handedness and tendencies?
gpt
Well, a big part of it is that the shift is tailored to an individual hitter’s tendencies. 

If you’ve been a pull hitter your entire life, then the defense starts playing you shifted to the pull side, you can’t just decide to become an opposite field hitter overnight. 

It’s like a default setting, for lack of a simpler term. The absolute best hitters are whole field hitters with no overt tendencies to use the shift against. The defense just has to play them straight up and hope the don’t hit one into the gaps. That’s why they’re the best hitters. 

Not everyone has the ability to be the best though. 

Another often overlooked aspect is that the battery (pitcher and catcher) are working with the shifted defense to induce a ball hit into the shift. 

For example, a left-handed pitcher facing a left-handed batter known to be a pull hitter will have the defense shifted towards first base. That pitcher isn’t going to throw a slider low and away so the batter can poke it down the third base line. The pitcher is going to pitch him inside where all the batter can do is turn on the pitch and pull it towards first.