A Time to Slug, and a Time to Bunt

In August, the Phillies hit 59 house runs, which is the best whole for a month in franchise historical past and tied for the third-highest whole in any single month by any crew in historical past. It was a exceptional efficiency, however maybe not a very shocking one given how this roster was constructed; by design, Rob Thomson’s expenses are massive, sturdy, and (of late) more and more shirtless. They had been born to mash.

Last week, I had the great fortune to be current at Citizens Bank Park as 5 of these 59 house runs took flight in a single night, off the bats of 5 totally different Phillies. This was a type of shut, muggy summer time nights that outline the mid-Atlantic summer time; with a pleasing, light breeze blowing out to left discipline, the ball was roaring out of the park. It wasn’t simply the Phillies; the Angels dingered 3 times themselves. Two of these got here off the bat of Luis Rengifo, hardly a person whose public stomps and chants are included within the Home Run Derby yearly.

But because the Phillies laid 12 runs on their opponents, the play that caught in my thoughts was the other of a house run. In the sixth inning, the Phillies batted round and scored six runs to show a 4–2 deficit into an 8–4 lead; a type of got here on a squeeze bunt by Johan Rojas. It was a stunning push bunt by a speedy right-handed hitter, the baseball equal of spreading room temperature compound butter on a slice of crusty bread. “Man, we should see that more often,” I believed to myself.

I minimize my tooth writing about school baseball again when the sacrifice bunt was an computerized motion each time there was a runner on first and/or second base with lower than two outs. I believed then, and nonetheless imagine now, that generally an overreliance on the sac bunt was a self-defeating motion introduced on by managers (or coaches, on the school degree) who needed to really feel like they’d management over an inherently chaotic recreation.

Back then, I bought a little bit of a status for being an anti-bunt crank, which isn’t utterly correct. I hated the cussed insistence that the good factor to do was nearly all the time to commerce an out for a base (if mentioned bunt was correctly executed appropriately, which was removed from a given). My little scarcity-obsessed animal mind couldn’t get on board with spending considered one of a crew’s most valuable sources (its 27 outs) for such a meager reward, notably when all accessible empirical proof revealed the common sacrifice bunt to be much more silly than most individuals thought.

But I’ve all the time beloved the shock bunt try for successful, the bunt in opposition to the shift, the suicide squeeze. Sometimes the bunt is genuinely the appropriate play, and bunt makes an attempt for successful reward daring and velocity, two attributes which are too sometimes rewarded on this recreation.

Bunts are like dill. Sometimes dill is the appropriate herb for a given scenario. Sometimes, tasting dill in an sudden meals — potato chips, most notably — could be positively invigorating. But you don’t wish to use an excessive amount of dill or in each dish you cook dinner. There’s a time and a spot.

Sure sufficient, groups have been utilizing the sacrifice bunt much less and fewer since 2015:

Some groups have basically eschewed the sac bunt endlessly. The Braves have laid down solely three prior to now two seasons put collectively, which is smart, as a result of pretty much as good as Atlanta’s lineup is, advancing a runner one base at a time is virtually stopping to odor the roses.

The proven fact that the sacrifice bunt has fallen up to now out of favor so shortly is at first proof that sabermetric finest practices are actually totally built-in into most managers’ tactical considering. The Dill Doctrine, in different phrases, is in impact. But it’s additionally necessary to do not forget that taking the bat out of pitchers’ fingers has knocked a number of hundred sacrifice bunts out off the league every season. In the three seasons wherein MLB has employed a common DH (2020, ’22, and ’23), the one pitcher bunt on document is a Shohei Ohtani bunt single final yr.

Even then, you possibly can see the decline of the sacrifice bunt in these numbers. One of the few situations wherein the automated bunt was really known as for concerned a pitcher hitting with males on. As the 2010s wore on, these conditions made up a progressively bigger share of sacrifice bunts and bunt makes an attempt typically. In 2015, pitchers accounted for a bit greater than 1 / 4 of whole bunt makes an attempt put in play and 40.5% of sacrifice bunts. By 2021, greater than a 3rd of whole bunt makes an attempt in play, and properly over half of sacrifice hits, got here off the bats of pitchers.

The different pandemic-related rule change was the addition of the bonus runner on second to start out further innings. If ever there have been a scenario that made a sacrifice bunt affordable underneath the Dill Doctrine, it’s runner on second, no outs, one run probably wins you the sport. And certain sufficient, a higher share of bunt makes an attempt happen in further innings now than they did earlier than the common DH and the bonus runner.

Before we go any additional, I wish to make a couple of factors concerning the statistics round bunting. In order to get the complete image, I’ve needed to cobble collectively information from our splits leaderboards, plus searches on Baseball Reference’s Event Finder, in addition to Baseball Savant. The splits leaderboards don’t embrace strikeouts on bunt makes an attempt, and why would they, as a strikeout isn’t a batted ball? And sacrifice hit leaderboards don’t have in mind sac bunts, just like the one Rojas laid down in opposition to the Angels, that finish with the batter reaching and the runners advancing however get scored as a fielder’s alternative and never a single.

When figuring out the worth of a bunt, the quantity to have a look at is batting common. Obviously no bunt goes down as a stroll, and sacrifices don’t depend as an at-bat. Occasionally, a bunt will go for a double, however not regularly sufficient to be statistically attention-grabbing. There have been eight bunt doubles since 2015, and whereas they’re of restricted empirical worth, they’re all good for fun.

The sticking level right here is that sacrifice bunts don’t get counted in opposition to a hitter’s OBP both, as a result of for God is aware of what purpose, a sacrifice bunt is taken into account to be a supervisor’s prerogative and never a helpful information level for participant analysis. This is the official MLB occasion line, and whoever made this resolution deserves to get up each morning to search out their underpants filled with mosquitoes.

So to be able to work out how a lot better the league is at bunting now than a couple of years in the past, I’m going to throw a couple of numbers at you. The first is batting common, strictly on batted balls measured as bunts. The second is bunt success charge, which is bunt hits plus sacrifice hits divided by plate appearances (balls in play and strikeouts) that finish on a bunt try. The third is bunt OBP, or bunt hits and no-out fielder’s alternative performs (just like the Rojas bunt) divided by whole bunts and strikeouts on bunt makes an attempt. And lastly, as a result of I’m feeling a bit licentious after the OBP factor, is a model of bunt OBP that punishes hitters with an additional out in the event that they hit right into a double play.

(By all means, stand up and stretch your legs when you’ve simply learn “bunt” so many occasions within the span of some paragraphs that it’s making you giggle.)

Back earlier than the common DH bought applied, followers of the thought would go on and on about how horrible pitchers are on the plate. And it’s true: pitchers have gotten worse at hitting, relative to the league, over time. Turns out they stank at bunting, too, as a result of with pitchers out of the equation, a bunt — even saddling the batted ball kind with the millstone that’s the sacrifice — seems to be an honest context-neutral play.

Not solely have mixture outcomes improved, however the worst-case situations on bunt makes an attempt have additionally all however disappeared. There have solely been seven bunt double performs in a bit greater than two normal-length seasons’ price of common DH, and strikeouts on bunt makes an attempt have dropped into the low double digits. Position gamers are faring higher on bunts than they did a couple of years in the past, however not by a ton.

I’ve all the time been amused by the methods wherein arguments or developments in sabermetrics get repeated almost verbatim in different sports with much less mature empirical traditions. Here, I feel we’re seeing the reverse. Just a few years in the past, the stat nerds in basketball established that the 2 finest pictures you might take, when it comes to bang to your buck, had been dunks and three-pointers. So analytically targeted golf equipment, just like the Houston Rockets underneath Daryl Morey and James Harden, had been optimized for that strategy. (“Whatever happened to those guys?” asks the completely depressing Sixers fan in 2023. “Did they end up winning a ring?”) Mid-range and lengthy two-point bounce pictures had been ridiculed as out of date, the best way we talked concerning the bunt 10 or 20 years in the past.

What the basketball massive brains got here to comprehend, although, is that whereas the two-point bounce shot is an inefficient use of a possession within the mixture, it may be fairly worthwhile underneath the appropriate circumstances — particularly, if the particular person capturing it’s dependable from that vary, and if the protection is leaving that shot open to be able to shield the rim and the arc. That’s the place baseball groups appear to have ended up on the bunt. In the appropriate fingers, and in the appropriate scenario, it may be the perfect shot on the courtroom.

All stats present as of Sunday, Sept. 3.