Bernstein: RIP, The Bunt
By Dan Bernstein--
CBSChicago.com senior columnist
(CBS) Outs matter. Outs are everything, the currency and the clock of baseball. Get the other team to make them and you win, make them yourself and you lose.
A team that makes no outs scores an infinite number of runs.
That's the basic theory underpinning the modern baseball enlightenment, one that finally began to value on-base percentage properly, in that it's really Not-Out Percentage. A lineup filled with higher rates of not being out will be a high-scoring one, indeed. The secondary, cumulative effects of this matter, too, because there's a finite number of pitches available from each starter and reliever each day – if innings grind on longer, there's opportunity to affect more than just that specific game at hand.
As part of this newer understanding of something so obvious, it makes sense that bunting has been on the decline, with managers finally having it pounded into their heads that giving away an out on purpose almost never makes sense. The calculation is complicated by the silliness of pitchers still hitting in the National League, certainly, but the growing awareness is clearer than ever.
Now, the process has accelerated notably already in the early stages of the 2016 season, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal on Monday.
From 1997 to 2011, the number of non-pitcher plate appearances per bunt remained relatively steady, fluctuating between a range of 160 on the low end and 200 on the high. Then in 2012, the arrow began to point upward, with the number climbing steadily each ensuing year, to a new high of 250 set in 2015.
This year the rate has spiked to 337, indicating a widespread appreciation of the importance of not making outs by choice. That equates roughly to position players bunting at an average clip of only once every nine games, according to the report.
The decline in stolen bases reflects this thinking too, because teams more intelligently evaluate the risk/reward of making an out and erasing a scoring opportunity versus moving up one base. Unless there's a 75 percent chance of it working, it's probably better not to try.
A slow and proper extinction of the bunt will likely feed on itself due to how often someone needs to practice it to do it effectively. Even now, we see major league hitters look ridiculous trying to execute it because of how rarely they were asked to on their way up. Even though high school and youth coaches may continue to perpetuate it, the logic will eventually filter down. Pitchers work on it it more than anybody else at the game's highest level, but most observers feel it's a matter of time until the designated hitter is standard in both leagues and that need is obviated completely.
One possibility raised for keeping the art alive has to do with using it to combat drastic defensive infield shifts that seem to create opportunities for easy hits when large areas are vacated in favor of covering the shaded spaces of a hitter's spray-chart. This wouldn't be giving away an out at all but actively trying to get on base.
The problem, as determined by a 2014 study at Fangraphs.com, is that data suggest that doing that is extremely difficult and unlikely enough to succeed that it's not worth trying. It looks great after we see it work, perhaps, but they concluded that in these situations, "It seems like bunting should be a walk in the park. The evidence suggests it's very much not."
So count that as another strike against it, with the bunt itself closer and closer each year to being out.
Dan Bernstein is a co-host of 670 The Score's "Boers and Bernstein Show" in afternoon drive. You can follow him on Twitter @dan_bernstein and read more of his columns here.