THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Thursday, April 03, 2008

Sac bunt: Who the hell is Richard Justice?

I vaguely recall hearing the name on BTF or somewhere like that.  He has a sports blog.  Here is the link to the blog as well as the thread I am writing about. The blog article or entry or whatever you want to call it is the usual BS about bunting or not bunting with player A at bat and the score x and y in inning z.  The batter usually does something bad and then someone complains that he should not have been bunting.  Of course, the complainer has NO idea whether it was “correct” or not to attempt a sac bunt in that particular situation, but he definitely has an “opinion” on it.

There are a slew of comments after the blog entry discussing (mostly fan speak) the sac bunt in general and that particular attempt.  I have a bug about sac bunt discussions.  The bug is mostly about the fact that many people think that conventional sabermetric wisdom is that a sac bunt is almost always wrong, especially early in a game, because the RE or WE charts indicate that it is, based on the runners advancing and the batter making out (which only happens around 60 some odd % of the time when a bunt is attempted).  Whether that is in fact conventional sabermetric wisdom, I don’t know, but it ain’t wisdom, cause it’s wrong.  Anyway, I wrote a lengthy post, basically summarizing the sac bunt chapter in The Book. I honestly thought that I was doing a valuables service to this guy and his blog community.  Below I will print Justice’s response to my long post, and my response to that, which I am assuming will not make it onto the blog.  You can also read my long post about the sac bunt here if you want to, rather than going to his blog. 

Justice’s first response after my long entry about the bunt was:

[I’ll bet you’re a lot of fun at the office Christmas party.--Richard]

I thought it was a joke.  Of course, we’ve all heard a version of that a million times before.

I responded, good naturedly:

I am, at a party full of nerds!

The next post was from someone else:

Mitchel Lichtman is one of the authors of The Book, and I believe he was once a consultant for the Cardinals.

That’s fine. I wasn’t looking for any credibility.  I just posted what I thought was some real interesting and little-known stuff (in the mainstream world of baseball analysis and baseball journalism in general) about sac bunting strategy.

Justice then writes:

I don’t care if he was nominated to the Supreme Court. I just want to know if it was the right move for Cecil Cooper to bunt in that situation. That’s the problem in dealing with the stat geeks. They’ve got so much stuff in their brains they can’t get a coherent thought out.--Richard]

At first I thought he was joking again.  Then I re-read it and realized that it probably wasn’t a joke.  I have no idea why the vitriol, other than this guy (Justice) is a jerk, and for no good reason, at least in this case.  I wasn’t criticizing or attacking anyone at all in my post.  I thought it was a great post that would be much appreciated, and I was looking forward to comments and questions. People are usually pricks for pretty good reasons.  I can’t think of a good reason why this guy would be acting like a prick other than he simply is one.

Finally, I responded with this, although I don’t think he’ll print it (he moderates the comments I guess):

Wow.  If you are serious with that statement, you are a real asshole.  I’d rather be incoherent. 

Check out our blog at http://www.insidethebook.com.  I made a special post linking to this site.  I’ll reprint this post, since you probably won’t post it yourself.

Here was my original (and only) post about the sac bunt, BTW:

If you really want a thorough analysis of the bunt, get The Book.

I will leave you with this:

There is ABSOLUTELY no way (in heck) that it is possible to figure out if and when a sac bunt attempt is correct until and unless you know exactly how often the batter is going (in the long run, or on the average) to do all the possible things that can result from a sac bunt attempt, which are:

1) make out and move the runners over.
2) make out and not move the runners over.
3) hit into a DP.
4) strike out.
5) walk.
5) Get to two strikes, hit away, and do one of the above or below, plus get an extra base hit.
6) reach on a single.
7) reach on an error.

I may have missed one or two outcomes. Assuming that the runners will advance and an out will be made does NOT allow you to figure out the run or win expectancy of a bunt versus that of hitting away, and thus whether a “bunt” is correct or not!

It only allows you to figure out whether placing the runners on the next base and declaring the batter out is better or worse than having the batter hit away. Unfortunately, that is not what happens when a batter attempts a sac bunt.

As it turns out, there are enough singles and ROE’s (and walks) when a bunt it attempted to justify a bunt in certain situations with certain batters and certain runners (even after incorporating the “bad” things, like not moving the runners over, hitting into a DP. K’ing, etc.). Unfortunately, there are no “opinions” which will help you figure out the right answer.

As I said, if you want to see the numbers and the correct calculations, read the sac bunt chapter in the aforementioned book.

Unless Cooper has read the book (The Book), there is no way he would know whether a bunt in that or any other potential situation is correct, and there is certainly no way any fan would know. Opinion is what you think of your wife’s earrings. The answer to these questions cannot be garnered from opinion; in fact, opinions are irrelevant. Either a sac bunt attempt is correct, not correct, or too close for anyone to care, based on the relevant data (score, inning, pitcher, batter, bunting ability and speed of the batter, speed of the runner, run scoring environment, etc.). Trying incorporating all of those things in your head.

As far as “scoring a run or two in order to get the offense going,” while I can say with reasonable certainty that that is nonsensical logic, even if it had some merit, the chances of scoring a run or more with a bunt attempt and without one are almost exactly the same anyway, so it won’t make any difference to speak of even if there were some short or long-term “emotional” effect from scoring a run or two. In any case, I would guess that whatever positive effect scoring a run or two had would be offset by the negative effect of reducing your chance of a big inning (when you attempt a bunt, you slightly increase your chances of scoring one or two runs and slightly decrease your chances of scoring a bunch of runs).

Cooper (or anyone else) could just as easily argue, “We didn’t bunt because we wanted to have a better chance of emotionally lifting this team by having a big inning.” In any case, as I said, since the chances of a run or two scoring are only slightly increased with a bunt attempt, the “emotional” argument has little merit.

Just to add one more (important) thing to the mix (and to illustrate again how useless the “runner advances and the batter is out” analysis is), which is also discussed in The Book, let’s say that bunting is close to not bunting in many circumstances (IOW, the win expectancy is about the same whether you bunt or don’t bunt), but that not bunting is a little better, but not much. What do you think the correct thing to do is?

It is still correct to sometimes (randomly - or at least the appearance of being random to the other team) bunt. Why is that? Because if you never bunt, you allow the team to never have to play in anticipating a possible bunt, thus they are in the ideal defensive position for a swinging away.

If you bunt sometimes, you force the defense to play up a little (not too much or they will be out of position when you don’t bunt), thus making your hitting more productive (more ground balls and pop files over the infield will sneak through for a hit). For example, let’s say that the bunt attempt with the defense playing a normal “possible bunt” position, is .02 runs worse than hitting away, so you decide that you are never going to bunt. Well, the other team, assuming that they know this or eventually figure it out (which they will), will play back and you will lose, say .02 runs, when you hit away (more ground balls and short pop flies are caught), AND all of a sudden your bunt attempt is worth more (a lot more as it turns out) since the defense is playing back and you will get more singles and ROE’s and fewer forces and DP’s on a bunt attempt. So now it is correct to bunt all the time! But you can’t do that, or the infield will play up all the time, making the hitting away the correct choice. So, you end up bunting and hitting away some percentage of the time, and the defense ends up playing somewhere in between up and back, and everyone is happy.

That is the way it works, but as I said, NO proper analysis can be done unless you can know or estimate how often each result happens with a bunt attempt (which depends on the batter of course).

I may have given away too much, and now you don’t have to read The Book!

Please tell all of your friends and relatives that:

1) NO ONE, but someone who has (competently) studied or read about sac bunt attempts and all of its statistical intracacies, can possibly know or figure out when a sac bunt attempt is correct or not, other than in obvious situations, so everyone can take their “opinions” and well, you know…

2) The bunt attempt is much more the correct strategy than “analysts” have said that it is (conventional sabermetric wisdom). It is often “corrrect” regardless of the game situation, simply because it has a higher run or win expectancy than hitting away.

3) Generally bunting or hitting away is fairly close, even if one side is clearly favored over the other, in conventional potential bunt situations, such that it is CRITICAL to randomly sometimes bunt and not bunt in order to keep the defense honest.

4) In fact, if you EVER let the defense know exactly what you are going to do (either bunting or not bunting all the time), you are probably doing something wrong. That includes with the pitcher at the plate.

5) With a decent hitting pitcher at the plate, it is incorrect to bunt him all the time. That is especially true with 1 out (and a runner on first - you never bunt the pitcher with 1 out and a runner on second of course).

6) The speed and bunting ability of the batter is a critical variable in determining how often to bunt or hit away. It is almost never correct to attempt a bunt, even in the late innings of a close game, with a poor bunter or slow runner at the plate.

7) It is correct to occasionally bunt a very good hitter (who has decent speed and bunting ability) just to keep the defense from playing all the way back with a runner on first or second and no outs in a close game. A decent bunter with decent speed will get a TON of singles (around 20% of the time) if he attempts a sac bunt with the fielders not anticipating one, more than enough to make up for the fact that you lose his “bat.”

8) It is of course better to bunt when the following batters are singles-type hitters who do not walk a lot. Funny, you often hear two diametrically opposed and mutually exclusive arguments against the bunt - one, “Why bunt with a slugger behind you - they just pitch around him with the base open.” Two, “Why bunt in front of the #7 or #8 hitters, you need to drive in the runners before those hitters get to the plate. While neither argument has much merit, the former one has much more merit than the latter.