re: For those complaining about Maineri and his lack of bunting

Why is not bunting more likely based on that stat if bunting could be included in both situations?

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Isn't bunting included in the 1st and 2nd and no outs? It's not an "if you bunt vs if you don't" stat. It's a situation stat. So if you sac with first and second, and then have 1 out with runners at 2nd and 3rd then score. It counts for both stats. It's not really saying anything abut bunting.

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It doesn't have to. What it is showing is that you are purposely putting your team into a worse chancr of scoring. There is an article that breaks down the exact batting avg where bunting is favorable, and it is around .150. That is why MLB managers still bunt pitchers. Once saber metrics came out, it pretty much put an end to sac bunting

Here you go. This shows when to "never" bunt, when to "always" bunt

Thus, we can conclude that, in this simple case, no matter who is coming up next, any batter hitting below .075 should always sacrifice, while any batter hitting better than .243 should never sacrifice. If nothing else, this conclusion lends further credibility to the idea that pitchers should almost always sacrifice if given the opportunity.

And then the avg of .159 being the mean where the choice is 50/50

For example:

100 situations with 1st and 2nd, no outs. People swing away 50 times and bunt 50 times. 83 times the run scored from 2nd. How many of those are related to the bunt?

100 situations with 2nd and 3rd, 1 out. 75 times the run scores. How many times were the runners moved due to a bunt?

Ell are you being serious?

Ell that isn't how the stats are tabulated. I really don't know what else to tell you.

I just don't know how ya'll can argue after that game. Fantastic ballgame.

Btw, I was right with my first comment. The stats are not based on a single run either. It's run totals:

1st and 2nd, no outs: 1.44 runs generated
2nd and 3rd, 1 out: 1.29 runs generated

That's where they get the 10.4% run differential (0.15/1.44 = 10.4%). So it's based on totals. Which makes sense. Hitting away is playing for a bigger inning in most situations. Bunting is playing for 1. And in game winning situations (like ole miss and kentucky) that's all you're shooting for and a "1" result would bring down the average for that situation.

ETA: maybe that's just a coincidence or the author didn't present the "chance of scoring a run" data. Just tryin to make sense of it.

LINK

"Over the past couple of decades baseball analysts have seemingly discredited the bunt in all but the most obvious situations. Much of their evidence is based on the use of an overall run expectation table that reveals a loss of run potential even with a successful sacrifice. These overall expected runs tables, however, fail to differentiate between the innumerable possible scenarios of the ability of the hitter at bat and those following in sequence. Subdividing the data by batting order position allows a look at more finely dissected sequences of player ability. Although most of this analysis still indicates a successful bunt does not increase the run potential, it certainly shows that it in certain base/out situations it is not as detrimental as commonly believed. In fact, disaggregating by batting order still averages over many different player ability sequences, suggesting that in a number of instances a bunt may actually increase the run potential."

These stats thrown out to "prove" bunting is the wrong thing to do always use these expected run tables and never take into account specific players, mainly pitchers, or situations.

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These stats thrown out to "prove" bunting is the wrong thing to do always use these expected run tables and never take into account specific players, mainly pitchers, or situations.

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I pointed out pitchers usually make sense to bunt. .159 avg is when the decision is 50/50