The MOST valuable thing in baseball are OUTS. There is no arguing that fact.
Each team in baseball only gets 27 outs for the game, and like Scott mentioned in the podcast. it's a low percentage play to sacrifice an out on a bunt just to move a runner over to 2nd base. It has been proven that it's a very inefficient play and often results in undesired results altogether. (See this article from a few years back: www.fangraphs.com/.../the-sacrifice-bunt-the-real-rally-killer )
Speaking of 'undesired results', do you know what the success rate of a sacrifice bunt is? Most people think it's probably close to 100% but that's just not the case. Since early 2000's, the success-rate of a sacrifice bunt fluctuated between 65-70% (See graph below...2013 data spiked up, but that was through a quarter of the season only, as taht's when the article was published). Basically, about 30-35% of the time, the player either strikes-out, induces an out at 2nd base, or worse yet, grounds into a double-play. You have to take into consideration the failure rate of the 'sacrifice' and most managers probably don't think about it as much as they should.
Even if a team is successful moving a runner over and sacrificing a precious 'out', the run-expectancy chart still shows that it's a worse scenario than having a runner on 1st with zero outs. See the chart below - I've highlighted the two scenarios. When the runner is on 1st-and-ZERO-outs, the run-expectation is 0.81 of a run for the 2014 season. When the runner is on 2nd-and-ONE-out, the run-expectation is significantly lower at 0.62. If you compare each run-expectation over a sample of 10-scenarios, then it's like losing 2 runs for every 10 instances of bunting a runner over (successfully of course!) and sacrificing an out. In a game of baseball, that is an absolutely HUGE difference and pretty much proves that doing so is not the optimal strategy.
# |
LVL |
YEAR |
RUNNERS |
EXP_R_OUTS_0 |
EXP_R_OUTS_1 |
EXP_R_OUTS_2 |
1. |
MLB |
2014 |
000 |
0.4552 |
0.2394 |
0.0862 |
2. |
MLB |
2014 |
003 |
1.2866 |
0.8873 |
0.3312 |
3. |
MLB |
2014 |
020 |
1.0393 |
0.6235 |
0.2901 |
4. |
MLB |
2014 |
023 |
1.8707 |
1.2714 |
0.5351 |
5. |
MLB |
2014 |
100 |
0.8182 |
0.4782 |
0.1946 |
6. |
MLB |
2014 |
103 |
1.6496 |
1.1261 |
0.4396 |
7. |
MLB |
2014 |
120 |
1.4023 |
0.8623 |
0.3985 |
8. |
MLB |
2014 |
123 |
2.2337 |
1.5102 |
0.6435 |
Here are KC's sacrifice-bunts in yesterday's game:
3rd inning: Down 2-1
9th inning: Down 7-6, Escobar sacrifices so that Dyson could move to 2nd with 1 out. Dyson proceeds to steal 3rd and then scores on a Sac-fly. What I don't understand is, if KC is going to sacrifice-bunt, why not let Dyson steal 2nd first, and then sacrifice him over to 3rd. Look at the run-expectancy chart: a runner on 3rd-and-ONE-out is expected to score .89 runs in that scenario. Stealing 2nd is easier than stealing 3rd, so again, just poor management by the Royals from my perspective (of course it worked out for them but we need to analyze the process without focusing on the result).
10th inning: Tie 7-7
11th inning; Tie 7-7
That's 4 sacrifices in one game, making his team's run-expectancy go from 0.81*4 = 3.2 to 0.62*4 = 2.5, and sacrificing a 0.7 of a run in the process. Of course the Royals were just looking to score 1 run each of those times and win the game, but it's still a lot of wasted outs from my perspective. Worked out well for them yesterday even though only 1 out of 4 sacrifices led directly to a run. Remember, Angels are a much more potent offensive lineup that the A's were in the 2nd half of the year. Runs will need to be scored to win games and if Yost does something as stupid as ordering a sacrifice bunt in the 3rd inning when it's a 1-run game, then KC's post-season will be very short-lived.