Once upon a time, teams used to pride themselves in playing so-called “small ball”.
It included high contact rates, lots of hits and runs, smart baserunning, and a specific play to move runners around: the bunt.
It was popular for decades.
Nowadays, however, more and more MLB teams are turning away from the bunt.
They have correctly identified that even when executed correctly, they are giving up an easy out.
Of course this is not always the case, since runners sometime reach first base safely, but more often than not, the play results in an out and there are only three in an inning to be giving away 33.3% chances of inflicting damage just like that.
The play is just ineffective, and the numbers show it.
The percentage of MLB bunt attempts put into play:
2016: 44.5%
2017: 45.4%
2018: 44.8%
2019: 44.9%
2020: 44.4%
2021: 44.5%
2022: 45.3% pic.twitter.com/dr9JlDPbJF— Codify (@CodifyBaseball) January 22, 2023
Of all bunt attempts in the league, less than half are actually put into play.
Take a minute to digest that.
We are not talking about around 44-45% of the bunts are effective, no: when MLB hitters try one, they put the ball in play less than half of the time.
That ridiculously lowers the odds of the play being effective.
We don’t actually have the math, but the chances a bunt attempt actually fulfills the objective (moving the lead runner or reaching base safely, depending on the case) are too low to be trying this play at this point.
Still, there are still managers who use it to varying degrees of success.
Outs, however, are scarce enough to be giving them away with such a low-efficiency play.
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