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Sunday, June 15, 2008
Should a manager sacrifice his team’s WE in order to “teach a player a lesson?”
In the WAS/SEA game tonight, the Mariners, down by 2 runs, has runners on 1st and 2nd and no outs. Yuni was asked to bunt. No big deal. He worked the count to 3-2, and everyone assumed that the bunt was off, as it usually is with a position player at bat and 2 strikes. Managers know that bunting a position player with 2 strikes is incorrect and rarely do it.
Managers do however, occasionally bunt a position player with 2 strikes, as “punishment” for not getting it done before 2 strikes. Now, we don’t know whether Yuni missed a sign or not, but the commentators seemed to think that this was a “punishment” bunt. I agree. Obviously the M’s are going nowhere, but should a manager be doing this? Should he be taking his frustration out on the players, at the same time knowingly reducing their chances of winning a game (obviously not by much)?