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THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

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Wednesday, January 31, 2007

The good side of sac bunting

By Tangotiger, 11:24 AM

Black Hawk weighs in on bunting for the Angels, and looks at each sac bunt, one at a time.

Without adjusting for the quality of the batter, the successful sacrifices by the Angels cost the team a whopping .224 wins.  That’s nothing; that’s two runs a season. If I adjust for the quality of the batter, that goes up from -.224 to -.094. Once I account for the handedness of the pitcher, which is as far as I went, that went up to -.080.

That’s based on 29 (or 31) bunts.  If you treat everyone as “average”, then the sac bunt costs .008 wins per attempt.  (The equivalent of -.09 random runs.) However, by looking at the identitiy of the batter and handedness of the pitcher, the value of the sac bunt was -.003 wins per attempt, or the equivalent of -.03 random runs.  There are also other factors to consider, some of which deal with game theory.  All-in-all, it’s likely that the Angels bunting was a wash.

An excellent look at how to start with a basic WE chart, and adjust it to fit the context.

(2) Comments • 2007/02/26 • SabermetricsIn-game_Strategy
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January 31, 2007
The good side of sac bunting