That's not to say that the sacrifice bunt isn't alluring in a game. Depending on the hitter at the plate; for example, if his batting average looks like a pitcher's, I probably would have bunted.
I would have bunted Pennnington, or if we happened to have a very talented bunter who was also a fast runner, I would roll the dice for a bunt base hit.
But it would be far from an automatic call, and that one run would need to win the game. The A's have bunted in far less justifiable situations in the past. But even if they had lost Monday's game, I stand by the decision to let Coco swing away. And I hope that trend continues this season; the A's will need each and every one of their precious outs. Mostly cloudy. Winds blowing out to right field at m. Game time temperature around Cookie banner We use cookies and other tracking technologies to improve your browsing experience on our site, show personalized content and targeted ads, analyze site traffic, and understand where our audiences come from.
By choosing I Accept , you consent to our use of cookies and other tracking technologies. There's a time and a place for a good bunt, but it's a dated play that is still used more often than it should be. If you're up for yet another assault on the bunt, pull up a chair and allow me to explain what the deal is. We'll get to why hitters trying to bunt for base hits isn't such a great idea soon enough, but first we should discuss the sacrifice bunt and its place in baseball today.
The following graph shows the number of sacrifice bunts per game by year since , with the data coming courtesy of Baseball-Reference. You can see that we're not looking at a straight downward trend, but the sacrifice bunt is certainly a rarity compared to its use in the late s. You can thank sabermetricians for this.
Bill James and others began waging war on the sacrifice bunt years ago, and eventually sabermetric thinking took over front offices and has slowly trickled down onto the field.
It's going to take a while before the sac bunt is out of the league completely, of course. Particularly in the National League, where pitchers are still required to "hit. But for the most part, the sac bunt has fallen out of favor because teams are too smart to be so dumb.
They know that the data says that giving up an out to advance a runner is a very bad idea. The Run Expectation with a runner on first and nobody out is higher than it is when there's a runner on second and one out, the situation usually created by a sac bunt.
The trend holds when discussing Win Expectancies in late-inning situations , which is something that noted sabermetrician Tom Tango tackled back in The win expectancy for a home team trailing by one in the bottom of the ninth is higher with a runner on first and nobody out than it is with a runner on second and one out.
And so on. Maybe you've heard these arguments before, but they're always worth repeating. It's data like this that upholds the age-old sabermetric stance that outs are too precious to give away with sac bunts.
It doesn't help that the league has gotten to be particularly bad when it comes to actually converting sac bunts. Here's a look at the success rate of sac bunts since Again, we're not talking about a straight downward trend, but you can see that things started going south in the s and got to be even tougher in the mids. There's been a spike in successful sacrifice bunts this year, sure, but we're barely a quarter of the way through the season.
Based on recent history, it's probably not going to hold. It makes sense that the success rate of the sac bunt would be going down rather than up.
Bunting involves intentionally getting yourself out in order for a runner on base to advance. The objective to bunting is to deaden the ball as it hits your bat. You want the ball to roll away from the catcher and toward either the first or third baseman. Your thumb should hold the bat against your index finger.
This will give you better control of the bat. Batters most commonly use bunts for the purpose of advancing runners on base, at the expense at getting out themselves. This is called a sacrifice bunt: a batter will bunt the baseball, the fielders will field the bunt and throw it to first base to put the batter-runner out, thus giving time for the runners already on base to advance.
A squeeze play is a special type of sacrifice bunt. It occurs when a batter bunts when there is a runner on third base, in an attempt to drive him home. There are two types of squeeze plays:. In a safety squeeze, the runner on third base waits to see if the bunted ball lands in fair territory, then he begins running to home plate.
In a suicide squeeze, the runner takes off for home plate as soon as the pitcher delivers the pitch. Since he won't know the outcome of the bunt until it is too late and he has already left the base, this is a very risky and rare play.
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