from Amazon
Monday, August 29, 2011
When sabermetric teams go wrong!
Oakland is known as the original sabermetric team of course - at least the front office. In tonight’s game, they were down a run in the top of the 8th with a runner on second and 0 outs. The pitcher was Tony Sipp, the lefty, and the batter was Crisp, batting right handed.
Bunting in this situation is probably marginal at best, because you are the road team, and you would like to score more than one run. As most of you know, I am not anti-sacrifice bunt, by any means. In fact, this is a great time to execute game theory and sometimes bunt and sometimes hit away. However, the SS was holding the runner at second, Weeks, very close, to keep him from stealing (the previous runner on second stole third easily on Sipp) and to keep him from getting a big jump on a possible bunt. At the same time, the 3B was playing close for the bunt. There was a gigantic hole between 2nd and 3rd base. Given that, I have to believe that hitting away is much the better option.
Now here is the kicker which made the bunt a horrendous play. The count went to 2-0! As we explain in The Book, when the count is in the hitter’s favor, especially 2-0, 3-0, and 3-1, it is rarely if ever correct to bunt for obvious reasons.
So given the hole at SS, the count, the favorable platoon matchup, and the fact that OAK was the visiting team, I don’t believe that a bunt can even be close to being correct, ever, even when considering game theory.
Anyway, Crisp bunted at ball 3, it was a bad bunt, Weeks didn’t advance and OAK never scored.
I have to wonder if Billy Beane or someone else from the front office discusses these things with their manager, Bob Melvin. I doubt it. I sure would…