You should NEVER sacrifice bunt in the American League. That is the mantra heard ever since the release of Baseball Between The Numbers in 2006. Looking back on box scores throughout the ages, the folks at Baseball Prospectus showed how teams are less likely to score multiple runs in an inning when they employ the sacrifice bunt. Giving up an out just to advance a baserunner is not the prudent thing to do, they say, unless it’s late in a game and that one run would be a difference-maker in the outcome. Otherwise, no go.

Just the other night during a Rangers-Mariners game, Elvis Andrus laid down a sacrifice bunt and, as usual, the Twitterverse exploded with a substantial number of Rangers fans decrying Ron Washington‘s reliance on the bunt. There were the “Wash is an idiot” tweets, the “NEVER EVER bunt” tweets and the snarky “Let’s bunt the guy to third next and then let’s bunt them home!” tweets. I especially loved one of the sabermetricians who engaged his followers in a debate over whether it was a good thing for Elvis to bunt or not. It was all very entertaining, but not worthy of a post here until someone asked this person to name one manager in baseball who wouldn’t use the sacrifice the way Ron Washington would. The response was: Joe Maddon.

Joe Maddon, the number-crunching genius (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Of course. Joe Maddon of the Tampa Bay Rays is the poster manager for the advanced metrics crowd. He’s up on all the latest advances in baseball statistics so he knows what’s going on, what works and what doesn’t. Meanwhile, the Rangers have Wash, the “manage by your gut” manager who seems to disavow just about anything advanced metrics can throw his way. He sacrifices too much, he is a terrible manager of the relief pitchers, he even lets his left-handed bats face lefthanders in the late innings of tight ball games. He not only doesn’t play the percentages in baseball, he probably doesn’t even know what the percentages are. He’s a mess.

When his name was brought up, I remembered something. Maddon employed the sacrifice bunt against the Rangers in a game just three days earlier. That got me to wondering if Maddon eschews the sacrifice bunt as much as some would think. I decided to check it out and I was somewhat surprised by what I found.

Last year, the Rangers had 36 successful sacrifice bunts. That ranked them 3rd in the American League. I expected to find the Maddon-led Rays down the list between 10th and 14th. Instead, it turns out the Rays were 5th in the league in sacrifices with 34, only two less than the Rangers.

I looked deeper at the situations where the sacrifices were used: Early innings vs. late; tie games, in the lead or trailing. I thought maybe the Rays bunted more in interleague play, when having your pitcher bunt is more acceptable because of being poor hitters overall. Nope. Rangers pitchers sacrificed 3 times, Rays pitchers only twice. Both teams utilized the sacrifice bunt when they were as much as three runs behind to when they were four runs ahead. The Rays successfully squeezed home a runner from third three times, the Rangers twice. Both teams used the bunt almost an equal number of times in the first third of the game, the second third of the game and the last part of the game.

In other words, in 2012 there was no real discernible pattern between the number-crunching Maddon and the gut-trusting Washington.

Ron Washington, the gut-trusting dummy.(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

What about 2011? Again, Texas had more sacrifices than Tampa Bay, but again only by two: 39-37. The Rays had two more successful squeeze plays than Texas. They also had two Pitchers sacrifice in Interleague play to the Rangers one. Again, it was pretty even in terms of what innings the sacrifices came. Tampa in 2011 was more likely than the Rangers to sacrifice when they were ahead in the game. Texas did have two games in which they had 3 sacrifices in the game while the Rays didn’t have any. All in all, though, it was still pretty close.

The only year in the last three that there’s a real difference is in 2010 when the Rangers employed the sacrifice bunt 53 times to the Rays 39.

Can one really make a case from these numbers that Joe Maddon and Ron Washington aren’t even in the same ballpark, so to speak, when it comes to the sacrifice? I don’t think so at all. If anything, I would say Maddon divides up the sacrifices more evenly among his batters, while the Rangers have Elvis Andrus sacrificing too much, double the number of the #2 guy in 2010 and triple the number of second best in both 2011 and 2012. Does Wash over-utilize the sacrifice? In 2010 maybe. The last two seasons? Doubtful.

In the end, does this prove anything? Probably not. Or maybe it’s just an indication that Wash haters are going to hate. 

Related articles

• The sacrifice bunt isn’t dead yet (espn.go.com)