Why bunt

But make no mistake about it: The bunt is still out of place in today's game. 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. Defenders should know how to defend the bunt better now than ever before, and there simply aren't that many offensive players who specialize in bunting anymore. Regardless of what you believe about the proper timing for a bunt in terms of game situations, what we can all shake on is that bunts should always occur early in the count.

A bunt should be put down before a hitter has the count in his favor, otherwise he risks giving up on a potential walk. A bunt should certainly be put down before a hitter has two strikes on him, as a foul bunt means a strikeout and a spot in the skipper's doghouse. And that's the thing about bunts and today's hitters. They don't like doing much of anything early in counts. Take a look at the rise in the league average for pitches seen per plate appearance since Since bunts require fielders to run a long distance in order to field the ball, this allows more time for runners on base to advance, and for the batter-runner to reach base himself.

Bunts are typically used by pitchers, who tend to be weaker hitters. Bunting usually does not allow the batter himself to reach second base or third base , but it is very useful in advancing a runner who is already on base. Usually, a batter will execute a bunt toward the end of the game, when it is a close game and it is crucial to advance runners for a greater chance that they will score. Bunting is usually executed by hitters who are average or below average, or who specialize in bunting.

Players usually only bunt when there are less than two outs , and less than two strikes. This is because bunting is a relatively risky maneuver, and because if the batter has two strikes and bunts the baseball foul, he is out.

There are lots of bunting strategies that baseball teams can use to score runs in difficult situations. There are two main strategies we will cover called sacrifice plays and squeeze plays. 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.

If the third baseman is playing so far back that they would have to run a long way to field a bunt, then bunting towards the third-base side of the field can be an easy way for a batter to get on base.

A well-placed bunt down the line could mean a base hit for the batter. A good reason for hitters to pay attention to the defense during warm-ups is to get a feel for how well the third baseman and the first baseman can field.

Sometimes, players will run into a scenario where the third baseman or the first baseman is having an off-day, unable to make throws, or unable to field ground balls. Hitters who are aware that the third baseman or first baseman are struggling can lay a bunt down the line with the confidence they will have a higher chance of getting on base. Sometimes pitchers have a tendency to finish their pitching motion towards one side of the mound. When this happens, pitchers tend to fall towards the glove side of the mound.

So right-handed pitchers tend to fall towards the left side of the mound while left-handed pitchers tend to fall towards the right side of the mound. If a batter notices that a pitcher tends to fall too far to one side of the mound, the batter can bunt the ball toward the other side of the mound.

Especially for batters who are fast, these extra few seconds it takes for the pitcher to field the ball can be beneficial towards safely reaching first base on a bunt.

All baseball hitters will go through a slump at least once in their careers, if not multiple times. I know from experience that slumps are a regular part of baseball, but I also know that slumps will eventually pass even though it may not feel like it.

One common method batters use to get out of a hitting slump is to bunt for a base hit. Bunting for a base hit will give batters confidence at the plate and bunting generally helps batters improve their hand-eye coordination for their next at-bat. Although there may be other ways to get out of a slump, some coaches and hitters prefer to bunt for a base hit to get out of a hitting slump.

When a game is close, bunting at the beginning of an inning can be the spark your team needs to get the bats going. If successful, bunting at the beginning of an inning is beneficial because it allows the team to get a runner on base with no outs. This gives the base runner the best opportunity to score, which is perfect for a close game. This also gives the hitting team additional options, like stealing second, performing a hit and run, or using a sacrifice bunt to move the runner over.

On the other side of the equation, if the bunt is unsuccessful, the batter records an out. The good news is that not much is lost because there were no runners on base and the team still has two more outs to go in the inning. So to combat a grand slam from crashing the momentum of a team, players will bunt for a base hit. If successful, this bunt could lead to another rally within that same inning. The scenarios given above reference general situations for when a player should bunt.

However, there are also very specific situations where players will want to bunt. Typically, these situations involve strategically moving a base runner towards the next base.