New formulas, algorithms and metrics for analyzing sports pop up every year. They challenge traditional scouting and can make a previously unheralded player appear valuable when looking through the right lens.
Casual fans need not look further than Moneyball, which tells the story of the Oakland Athletics’ general manager Billy Beane, who – simply put – opted to sign versatile, contact-oriented players over flashy power-hitting ones by using a practice called sabermetrics.
Sabermetrics, a word derived from the acronym SABR — which stands for Society for American Baseball Research — is now commonplace across Major League Baseball. It’s even made its way to the NBA and NFL.
It stands in direct opposition of old-guard analysts, who tend to value statistics like batting average, home runs and RBI over stats like on base percentage and wins above replacement.
The bottom line is that sabermetrics work.
But old habits die hard, especially when coaches have proven themselves with traditional strategies.
One strategy that Oregon baseball has learned to embrace is bunting.
“You’re looking at a guy that believes in the bunting game,” head coach George Horton said.
By the book, a bunt is an offensive technique where a batter holds the bat out in front of home plate to tap the ball into play, rather than swinging at it full strength. Teams can use bunts to advance baserunners with sacrifice bunts, or attempt to reach first base safely by bunting for a hit.
Conventional baseball wisdom says that bunts are a productive strategy, as they are almost always productive outs. For example, National League managers would rather have their pitchers bunt a runner from first base to second base for the second out than risk a double play that would end an inning.
On the other hand, sabermetrics revealed that bunting actually reduces run expectancy.
(via Baseball Prospectus)
In 2014, teams averaged 0.8182 runs whenever they had a runner on first with no outs, but scored just 0.6235 runs when they had a runner at second base with one out.
This shows that bunting to advance runners from the first situation to the latter actually hurts a team’s chances at scoring.
The simplicity of run expectancy has led multiple fans to openly criticize managers that frequently use bunts to advance runners as opposed to swinging away.
“On base percentage is important, scoring runs is important, but it’s not major league baseball,” Horton said. “In the major leagues, you put a bunt down, it’s an out 99 percent of the time.”
College baseball is considerably different.
“Sometimes it’s thrown away, and sometimes that creates pressure and things that open up Pandora’s box,” Horton said.
(via Beyond the Box Score)
The statistic rBIP, generated by Bryan Cole of Beyond the Box Score, is an offshoot of batting average on balls in play as it calculates the percentage of at bats in which a batter puts the ball in play and reaches base safely, but includes reaching on fielding and throwing errors.
As you can see, college baseball allows a noticeably higher amount of batters to reach base when they simply put the ball in play – whether it is by bunting, or hitting a ball into play.
This means Oregon’s small ball tactics aren’t as conservative as they seem to be. The fact that college teams don’t have players like Manny Machado and Adrian Beltre playing third base is an important factor when analyzing run expectancy with bunting.
While it might be frustrating to see Oregon’s No. 2 or No. 3 hitter squaring to bunt in the first inning, Horton has more statistics behind his reasoning than you think.
“The winningest all-time coach in Division 1 history Augie Gurrido believes in the bunting game. George Horton, who some people think has had some success, has won a lot of championships with the bunting game,” Horton said. “Maybe the next coach at the University of Oregon can deal with ‘Cybernetics.’”
Follow Josh Schlichter on Twitter @joshschlichter
