This is a situation I’m sure you have experienced. You’re watching a Red Sox game, and David Ortiz comes to the plate leading off an inning. The Sox are trailing by two runs. That sneaky Joe Maddon has the Tampa Bay Ray infielders all lined up on the right side of the infield. Ortiz takes a mighty swing… and drops his head in disgust as his sharp ground ball is fielded in short right field and he’s thrown out.
With more and more teams employing these shifts, especially against left handed sluggers, the question becomes: Why doesn’t David Ortiz bunt more? In 2013, he was unsuccessful on his only bunt attempt put in play. For his career, he’s six for eleven with two sacrifices on bunts put in play. Over fifty percent seems like a pretty good percentage, and it could even improve with more attempts.
So when shouldn’t David Ortiz bunt? Let’s say any time there are runners on base, it’s more valuable to have him swing away with the power and slugging he provides. Also, the game situation dictates this to some extent. If the Sox are trailing by a run, we of course want him trying to tie it with one swing.
To me, the situations that make the most sense for a bunt attempt are when he leads off an inning, and when there are two outs in the inning and no one on. Leading off with a bunt hit puts immediate pressure on the pitcher, and a bunt hit with two outs prevents an easy one two three inning.
Big Papi, Photo by Kelly O’Connor, sittingstill.smugmug.com
The Red Sox as a team hit almost twenty five points higher with men on base then with the bases empty. A successful bunt by Ortiz in the situations mentioned above puts the next batter and the team in a better offensive situation.
It might also have the ancillary benefit of reducing the amount of shifts that he sees. If he’s bunting for a hit every few games, managers at least have to consider whether the shift is worth it.
I ran the numbers, and Ortiz this year has almost 200 plate appearances where he either led off an inning or came up with no runners on and two outs. If he bunted in 25% of those plate appearances, that’s 50 bunts over the season, a little over one every three games. If he was successful 50% of the time, that’s 25 extra hits on the season. To put that into context for this season, those 25 hits would raise his average from .307 to .356, making him first in the American League.
The excellent sportswriter Joe Posnanski wrote a piece this week about bunting versus the shift, and how it’s likely psychological reasons that keep sluggers from doing it. You can see from the numbers, though, that even a small amount of bunting in limited situations could have a big impact.