Men are macho. Get a gaggle of men together, what the hell is a gaggle anyway?, and you will see one fella try to out macho the next guy nearly every time. Whichever fella has bigger biceps, a faster car or the more expensive watch has to be the winner. Men are all about being better than the guy next to them. Really, we suck at this. Everything is a competition, and inevitably we just the winner based on strength. That might be one of the reasons that the bunt has vanished from baseball It’s not the only reason, we will get into that below, but the fact is that the bunt isn’t sexy. In fact, it’s seen as a sign of weakness in some circles. Even if a team is pulling a shift on the batter, most “macho” big leaguers simply try to blast the ball through the shift versus taking what the defense gives them. Is that the right thing to do, or, should players and teams get rid of the macho crap and simply take the free base that is being offered them if a team employs a radical shift against the batter?
Circling back, a gaggle is defined as a group, aggregation, or cluster lacking organization. Sounds about right.
I’ve said, since watching Barry Bonds with the Giants when teams started to line up defensively with exaggerated shifts to his pull side, that he should just bunt (the shift is nothing new as it actually started back in the playing days of Ted Williams. Williams didn’t bunt often at all, but every once in a while he did). This article though was prompted by a tweet from Travis Sawchik. The Rays are playing the Blue Jays, and youngster Cavan Biggio was at the dish. Check out the alignment that the Rays tossed out there against the lefty swinger.
I saw this and tweeted “please bunt.”
Terry responded “Bunt doubles are fun.”
Look at that picture closely. Not only are there no fielders on the left side of the infield, but there are only three infielders in total as the Rays shifted their second baseman – Brandon Lowe – to right field. A ground ball to the left side of the infield is a hit. A bunt to the left side of the infield is a hit (turns out, bunts against the shift are producing a better batting average than grounders).
So again, why not bunt and get on base?
PLAYERS DON’T KNOW HOW TO BUNT
I looked through a database for the picture to accompany this article. I had to scroll through about 200 bunting photos to finally find someone that actually looked like they knew how to bunt. Most guys had the barrel way below their hands, while others had their hands way to high up the bat (there’s one of Chris Paddack literally placing his right hand in the middle of the barrel like five inches from the end of the bat) while still others had their hand wrapped around the bat exposing their bottom hand to being hit by the baseball.
The talent in baseball has never been better in MLB. At the same time, the fundamentals of the game my never have been worse in some respects. One of those areas is certainly the bunt. It’s not that hard to be effective at it, but you have to practice. Clearly, teams just don’t push their players enough to work on this former big-league staple. Granted teams don’t have as much of a need for a bunt as they did in the 70’s, but the lack of fundamentals in regards to the bunt is astounding.
Bunting isn’t easy by any means, but neither is squaring up a 97-mph fastball. Joey Gallo, a guy who is shifted against a ton, doesn’t think bunting is smart for him. “Most people assume, there’s nobody on the left side, so just bunt it,” Gallo said. “It’s not that simple. It’s not that easy against a guy who is throwing 107 [miles per hour] with a ton of movement like [Houston’s Justin] Verlander. I don’t want to come out of my game to do it. If I bunt and don’t reach, it’s like ‘what the hell are you doing?’ It’s kind of a lose-lose situation.” But is he right? If he actually practiced a bit, and became proficient at bunting, would the Rangers be a better offensive team? There’s a lot of math in this BP article, but here’s the main takeaway. A bunting Gallo, in 2017, would have led to more runs scored for the Rangers than they actually scored. I’ll get back to Gallo below.
By the way, here’s a decent, basic video of bunting techniques.
PLAYER GET PAID TO HIT HOMERS
Statcast.
Launch angle.
Exit velocity.
That’s all you hear on television when you look for baseball analysis. Read an article of your favorite analyst and you’re likely to see at least one of those terms appears (this is especially true of fantasy analysts). In 2019 the game is geared toward hitting the ball hard, and in the air. Singles are nice, but you might need four of them to score a run. Hit a homer, and that one batter is guaranteed of producing at least a run. The damage quotient is more important to teams to day, and therefore “small ball” is really a thing of the past (some teams still employ the concept at some levels, such as the Royals, but it’s a dying art form). Bunting just isn’t en vogue, and it’s completely against the current thought process with offense and run scoring in baseball.
I’M TALKING ABOUT BUNTING FOR HITS
I should make a point that I’ve obliquely referenced to this point. My article isn’t about the sacrifice bunt. The game has reduced the bunt rate substantially in recent years as it is clear that bunting to advance a runner isn’t always advantageous. In fact, there are merely a few instances where bunting to move a runner along is warranted.
THE MISTAKEN ASSUMPTION OF STATSHEET BASEBALL
What is the most important thing in the game of baseball? Muscles? Pitching? Fielding? Hitting? Coaching?
The most important aspect of a baseball game, the single most important number, is 27. That’s the number of outs a team has in a regulation baseball game. Nothing is more important. That’s why the idea of giving away outs on a sacrifice bunt is anathema to some.
But, has statsheet baseball taken this line of thought too far?
A .300 hitter makes an out 70 percent of the time. So, in a best-case scenario, when someone puts the ball in play, they are out 70 percent. In 2019 the number for an average player is 75.3 percent outs made when the ball is put in play.
A player with a .350 OBP makes an out 65 percent of the time. In 2019 the number for an average player is 68 percent outs made per plate appearance.
Do you really think when there is no one on one side of the field, like in the above Cavan Biggio example, that if you knew how to bunt you couldn’t get a bunt down toward the left side of the infield more than 32 percent of the time? Not once out of three bunt attempts? Last season when the shift was employed the success rate on bunts producing a base hit was 54.1 percent. In 2019 that mark is up to 61.7 percent. In 2019 when bunting against the shift batters are making an out 38.3 percent of the time. The average Major League hitter makes an out on batted balls 75.3 percent of the time, or virtually twice as often.
I’m sorry, but logic, and the data, says that bunting against the shift is a winning move. Sorry Joey Gallo but you have bunted against the shift, and it looked very natural. Oh, and it was against Justin Verlander, so can we just erase everything that was quoted above from Gallo?
So, the moral of the story is this. If a team is going to give you a free base, Mr. Biggio, take it. It’s even possible that a truly adept bunter could hit a double on such a shift. Lay a bunt down a couple of times, get on base and avoid an out allowing your team to have a higher run scoring potential. Teams will eventually stop shifting you as much if every time you come up you bunt and get on base. They are daring you to do it. So, do it. You will be more successful doing it than you will if you just swing away anyway. Plus, do it a couple of times and you will force the defense to play more straight up traditional baseball which – what do you know – will open up more lanes for you to whack base hits when you do swing away.
Pretty simple really.
Ray Flowers can be heard Monday-Friday, 8-10 PM EDT on SiriusXM Fantasy Sports Radio (Sirius 210, XM 87). Follow Ray’s work on Twitter (@baseballguys) and be sure to listen to his podcast work too.
