Cedric Mullins - 30/30 ?

[Frobby]

45 minutes ago, Philip said:

Well that kind of begs the question of parsing your statistics to exclude the guys who don’t bunt well And look at the guys who bunt for a hit as well as they swing for a hit(Or finding out the guys who come closest to bunting with success equal to swinging.)
That might be nobody, well Ichiro maybe.

And then figure out what percentage of difference makes bunting for a hit worthwhile, or gleaning whether There are particular circumstances where the percentage of success is substantially greater.

Otherwise, there’s just no point to doing it at all. And when you remove the incentive to do something that is itself exciting, you make baseball more boring.

What incentive do you think has been removed?

I think players attempt to bunt for a hit only when they believe they’ve got a very good chance to be successful, either due to their skill, the position of the fielders, or both.    Most of them misjudge their chances, probably because they bunt so rarely that they’re not good at it.   

There can be one positive consequence from an unsuccessful bunt, if it causes the fielders to move a little closer in for future at bats.   But I think that effect is pretty minimal, if the bunt wasn’t successful in the first place.  
 

[Can_of_corn]

46 minutes ago, 7Mo said:

Earlier in the thread I was going to post "players don't bunt because it's not easy to bunt" which would have been accurate but not persuasive. 

And then I ran across this factual masterpiece. Excellent post.

It used to really frustrate me when folks were all "Why doesn't Davis just bunt?".

[Frobby]

45 minutes ago, Can_of_corn said:

It used to really frustrate me when folks were all "Why doesn't Davis just bunt?".

The opportunity cost isn’t that great when you’re hitting .168.    His few bunt attempts were pretty pathetic though.  

[OsFanSinceThe80s]

1 hour ago, Frobby said:

The opportunity cost isn’t that great when you’re hitting .168.    His few bunt attempts were pretty pathetic though.  

Especially when you make a habit of staring at strike three. 

[BohKnowsBmore]

5 hours ago, Frobby said:

Like I posted, the O’s are just about average in both successful bunt hits and success rate.   And yes, bunt attempts are more rare than they used to be.   Just going back to 2010, the median number of successful team bunt hits was 23, compared to 8 today.  The median team success rate was about the same as today, however, about 20.8%.   Apparently in the last 11 years someone figured out that trying a move with a 20.8% success rate and very little payoff when it was successful was a stupid thing to do.    It’s interesting though that the success rate hasn’t gone up, when (1) teams are being more selective about doing it, and (2) there are so many defensive shifts where the 3B is in no position to field a bunt.   I suspect the answer is that hitters don’t do it or practice it as much so they’re less proficient when they do try it.   

I assume there's a selection-bias issue, similar to SAM linebackers in football. In college football, it's really difficult to scout NFL-quality SAM linebackers. If you're a stud outside linebacker / edge defender in college, you're probably rushing the passer more often than playing any sort of coverage, which is often a waste of value. Similarly, guys who are MLB-quality hitters probably aren't spending much time bunting throughout their amateur (or MiLB) careers, particularly now that smallball is largely out of vogue in general, at least compared to previous decades. So, naturally, MLB hitters have spent little time bunting throughout their careers.

[BohKnowsBmore]

2 hours ago, Frobby said:

The opportunity cost isn’t that great when you’re hitting .168.    His few bunt attempts were pretty pathetic though.  

 

3 hours ago, Can_of_corn said:

It used to really frustrate me when folks were all "Why doesn't Davis just bunt?".

 

Of all the player archetypes around, I would imagine that Davis's would be one of the ones to bunt the absolute least at all levels coming up.

[Il BuonO]

Don’t think I’ve seen him lose his temper like he did tonight after that last AB. Sounds odd to say it was good to see, but he was justified. 

[interloper]

Another ball he dived for last night went in and out of the glove and/or was trapped. I really feel like I've seen this a lot. And I guess it's just that he's nearly getting to balls that not many players would. But also, he did get there, the dive was on time, the glove was in the right spot, the ball probably should have been caught. 

[Ruzious]

19 hours ago, Frobby said:

Adam played CF far too long.   He was a very graceful athlete, but his speed wasn’t CF quality the last 2-3 years he was in Baltimore.   

It's in the book of unwritten baseball rules that you are required to keep your long-time fan favorite CFers and SS's at those positions for 2 years after they're no longer adequate at them.    

[Frobby]

8 hours ago, interloper said:

Another ball he dived for last night went in and out of the glove and/or was trapped. I really feel like I've seen this a lot. And I guess it's just that he's nearly getting to balls that not many players would. But also, he did get there, the dive was on time, the glove was in the right spot, the ball probably should have been caught. 

I think it hit the ground before reaching his glove.   Not going to fault him for that one.   He got a decent jump on it and just missed getting there.   

[bobmc]

1 hour ago, Frobby said:

I think it hit the ground before reaching his glove.   Not going to fault him for that one.   He got a decent jump on it and just missed getting there.   

He got a cheap assist to help his cause (I didn't see it but read that whoever he put out overran the play).

[sevastras]

20 hours ago, Ruzious said:

It's in the book of unwritten baseball rules that you are required to keep your long-time fan favorite CFers and SS's at those positions for 2 years after they're no longer adequate at them.    

Or their entire career in the case of Derek Jeter.

[DrungoHazewood]

On 9/1/2021 at 11:27 AM, DrungoHazewood said:

I would think it stabilizes much more quickly since it's basically measuring how fast does he get where he needs to be.  Question for Tom Tango.

So I asked Tango on another site and his response was to chastise me for using "stabilize" instead of "become reliable".  I'd still like to know the answer, it might have been buried in the hundreds of tweets telling people to never use stabilize.

[Frobby]

38 minutes ago, DrungoHazewood said:

So I asked Tango on another site and his response was to chastise me for using "stabilize" instead of "become reliable".  I'd still like to know the answer, it might have been buried in the hundreds of tweets telling people to never use stabilize.

How irritating.   Maybe it’s because he doesn’t know the answer.  

[DrungoHazewood]

1 hour ago, Frobby said:

How irritating.   Maybe it’s because he doesn’t know the answer.  

That would surprise me.

In other news about irritating sabermetic icons, I recently discovered that I've been blocked on Twitter by Bill James.  I essentially never tweet anything, I just follow others.  And my twitter handle is obscure and nobody would know it's me.  But one day I was feeling chippy and Bill posted something that I disagreed with while also using an acronym I didn't recognize.  One of Bill's pet peeves is people who use acronyms without spelling them out, so I tweeted back "please spell out all acronyms".  And he blocked me.