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The Merits of the Bunt
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<blockquote data-quote="Lagrangejacket" data-source="post: 305558" data-attributes="member: 3179"><p>Good post. I’ll just add a few points in no particular order:</p><p></p><p>1. Sacrifice bunting becomes a worse decision the better your offense is. Obviously, you would never sacrifice if your team bats 1.000. The expected run table you linked has a run expectancy for the game of 5.67 (9 innings * 0.63 runs). GT is currently averaging 6.5 runs/game, so run expectancies for GT are generally higher than that chart suggests.</p><p></p><p>2. All the season stats out there assume <em>successful</em> sac bunts. There is always the possibility that a sac ends up as a bunt single, the batter gets out without moving the runner over, double play, etc. Attempting a bunt can also make a batter acquire two strikes and be forced to swing away with an adverse count - that doesn’t show up in the box score. I don’t have any stats on how good we are at laying down bunts, but I feel like it must be pretty bad.</p><p></p><p>3. Bunting early in the game drives me doubly crazy. If it’s the top of the 1st, you have no idea how many runs you’ll need to win the game. You can make a guess based on the pitchers, weather, teams’ ERA and batting average, etc. But the variance is large. As an example, we sacrificed in the 2nd inning on Friday, and got a run out of the inning. We lost 10-1. When it’s early in the game, go with the option that gives you the most expected runs.</p><p></p><p>4. The corollary of #3: bunting may become more viable late in the game. Later in the game, you have a much better idea of how many runs you’ll need to win the game. For example, if the game is tied in the bottom of the 9th, you need exactly one run. Play to maximize the probability of scoring one run - this would allow bunting a runner from 2nd to 3rd with 0 outs, for example.</p><p></p><p>5. Sacrifice bunting in MLB is way down. There were 0.21 sacrifices per game in 2017, the lowest in baseball history. Note that scoring is much higher (~30%) in D1 baseball than MLB. Also note that pitchers bat in half of MLB.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Lagrangejacket, post: 305558, member: 3179"] Good post. I’ll just add a few points in no particular order: 1. Sacrifice bunting becomes a worse decision the better your offense is. Obviously, you would never sacrifice if your team bats 1.000. The expected run table you linked has a run expectancy for the game of 5.67 (9 innings * 0.63 runs). GT is currently averaging 6.5 runs/game, so run expectancies for GT are generally higher than that chart suggests. 2. All the season stats out there assume [I]successful[/I] sac bunts. There is always the possibility that a sac ends up as a bunt single, the batter gets out without moving the runner over, double play, etc. Attempting a bunt can also make a batter acquire two strikes and be forced to swing away with an adverse count - that doesn’t show up in the box score. I don’t have any stats on how good we are at laying down bunts, but I feel like it must be pretty bad. 3. Bunting early in the game drives me doubly crazy. If it’s the top of the 1st, you have no idea how many runs you’ll need to win the game. You can make a guess based on the pitchers, weather, teams’ ERA and batting average, etc. But the variance is large. As an example, we sacrificed in the 2nd inning on Friday, and got a run out of the inning. We lost 10-1. When it’s early in the game, go with the option that gives you the most expected runs. 4. The corollary of #3: bunting may become more viable late in the game. Later in the game, you have a much better idea of how many runs you’ll need to win the game. For example, if the game is tied in the bottom of the 9th, you need exactly one run. Play to maximize the probability of scoring one run - this would allow bunting a runner from 2nd to 3rd with 0 outs, for example. 5. Sacrifice bunting in MLB is way down. There were 0.21 sacrifices per game in 2017, the lowest in baseball history. Note that scoring is much higher (~30%) in D1 baseball than MLB. Also note that pitchers bat in half of MLB. [/QUOTE]
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