re: BUNTING basics for Lester

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When actually I said there is no winning this discussion.

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You think you can’t be wrong as long as you pin it on the coaches gut. That is fundamentally wrong & ignorant.

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fricking idiots don’t understand how having more tools in your tool box MATTERS.

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Sorry you don’t understand math and probability. If something has a 30% probability of working does not mean it will never happen or never “work”. You look at as if only 1 thing could work. It’s natural to see something “worked” ie the team bunted and the lead runner went on to score and think it was the right thing to do, but why assume just hitting away would not have worked? Just citing examples where bunting “worked” is called survivorship bias. You remember those and not all the others that didn’t work or times where swing away “worked”.

When you sacrifice bunt, you lower the expected amount of runs in an inning. And, in baseball, most games are won with the team that puts up the highest-scoring inning of the game, not the team that scores in more innings.

If your team puts together single runs in three innings, and my team puts up a 5 spot in one inning (particularly because my team didn't bunt and then popped a 3-run HR as part of the 5-run inning), my team usually wins the game.

Like everything, there are exceptions to every rule. If you're in the LSU-Wake Forest CWS game between Skenes and Lowder from 2 years ago where every run is at a premium, then, yeah, you're probably gonna bunt earlier (maybe even in the first inning) and possibly a little more often.

But in a game against Omaha in February, you shouldn't be bunting unless it's a tie game in the late innings.

For some reason everyone is arguing about THAT situation and not looking at this in the context for what it was whether Jay made the decision or not. If the player made the decision, he saw something to take advantage of that he thought would work. If Jay made the decision, I think it is much deeper than what we are discussing.

Would you agree that this is completely a different team than last season? Would you also agree that Jay’s Weaver ball approach is not the same based on those players that he has seen both within the program and he brought in? Their expected HR numbers will be down this season. There really isn’t a way around that. However, that doesn’t mean they still can’t produce runs or “manufacture runs” as he has stated. What is his objective for these games?
1. Learn his players.
2. Learn how his players respond to certain pitching and get a feel for what they will do in certain situations.
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3. Intentionally provide other teams with information especially early in the season.

One could argue that this should be more of a surprise but I disagree. He has to be able to see if it can be executed at any point in time in the game. As an opponent you MUST prepare for Curiel and Dickinson to lay down bunts for hits or Stanfield, Dickinson and Curiel to steal a base.
You also want teams to prepare for Jones running on down pitches.

Manufacturing runs requires players to get on base and to move them in a variety of situations.

That specific situation could have easily been in the bottom of the ninth in a 0-0 score with a man on and no outs.

They didn’t hit to save their life in Game 2 and ended up losing by a single run because they didn’t bring in the guy from 3rd. Poor plate discipline by Larson and the same ugly pop-up showed up with the next batter that did the entire game.