Commissioner on shift comment: Not a good idea to read too much into that

Newly-minted MLB commissioner Rob Manfred is hoping people take some of his recent comments with a grain of salt.

After replacing outgoing commissioner Bud Selig on Sunday, Manfred proclaimed that he's open to considering rule changes in order to increase offense. Eliminating the defensive shift was addressed, with Manfred saying that he's "open to those sort of ideas."

His comments resulted in some backlash, with Manfred sitting down with Ken Rosenthal of FOX Sports to help clarify some of those concerns. 

What I said I think was, I was prepared to have a conversation about shifts. Look, we have a lot of conversations in this building about a lot things, so I don't think it would be a good idea to read too much into that comment.

Having said that, we watch what goes on in the game very, very carefully. On the field, the trends, we're always doing that. There was a lot of talk about the lack of offense, particularity late last year and coming into the offseason. We're watching those trends.

One of the reasons we don't act too quickly, you never know whether people are gonna adjust. Maybe a lot of hitters went home this winter and figured out how to go the other way against the shift and its gonna self correct and we're not going to need to make a change.