Squeeze Bunt Success Rate

[Oxy]

Logan's referring to an out vs. not having an out. You're costing yourself a run by making an out. Obviously, a base hit would be a better outcome. There isn't a great difference between a failed contact play and another kind of out.

 

The exact opposite is actually happening though. Fewer outs will be recorded by having the contact play on than by not having the contact play on. It's easier to throw to first for the force out than it is to throw home for the tag/rundown.

 

I think you are assuming everyone is blinded by their aversion to making an out at home when in reality, the confusion is regarding how you are framing the question. I asked you to provide the assumed base/out situations. You came back with the run difference between to base situations. The part that you appear to be ignoring in your analysis is the part that I don't like about the contact play. A contact play forces a batter to swing at a pitch that he otherwise may not have. That obviously negatively impacts the odds of that swing resulting in good contact and hence, a non-out. That must be considered in any analysis of the contact play.

 

Am I misunderstanding something?

 

Yes, I think you are. I'm not talking about the squeeze play (safety/suicide or otherwise) The batter has nothing to do with the contact play. It's NOT a hit and run. He just takes his AB as he normally would. What it DOES do, is allow the runner on third to get a gigantic lead at third base and immediate take off for home as soon as the ball hits the ground. He freezes on a line drive/fly ball/ etc. If the contact play is not on, he has to take a smaller lead at third, as if the ball is hit hard at the third baseman or SS he has to get back to the bag before they do. With the play on, he can be as far away from the bag as the third baseman (or a step farther) and score that many more times on ground balls that he wouldn't be able to if he were 5 feet closer to the bag. There is very, very little downside to having the contact play on, at least once you get over the trauma of making an out at the plate.

 

Also, I agree that very few times the batter ends up at second base on the contact play. That is more due to poor awareness, coaching, execution and understanding of baserunning than a strategic thing. Obviously if Prince is at the plate and Johnny Estrada is at third, that situation won't happen (Although it still might be advantageous to run the contact play). But the current team has A LOT of speed and athleticism. They should be able to run it more effectively than they do (even still, I think it's been more positive than negative the last couple of years).

[logan82]

Logan's referring to an out vs. not having an out. You're costing yourself a run by making an out. Obviously, a base hit would be a better outcome. There isn't a great difference between a failed contact play and another kind of out.

Yup that's what I meant. You end up in a worse base/out state when you fail at a contact play than if you just get an out at 1B. I forgot to take into consideration that you would probably give up the out anyway. Still you would need it to work more than just occasionally for it to be worth it.

 

The contact play seems to be such a bad idea because it hardly ever works and you usually end up in a worse base out state. The contact play and a lot of other small ball strategy along with avoiding strikeouts seems to be High School and lower level strategy where the fielders are not quite as good and are much more prone to mistakes. The fielders, even the bad ones, are so much better that you need to do more than just put the ball in play.

[RobDeer 45]

I think next year we will get a thread going with a running total of every time the squeeze play is attempted. We can than keep stats and debate from there!

 

Again, I think the reason I like it is that I believe it gives us a better percentage at getting one run. I agree that it decreases the percentage of scoring multiple runs in that inning, but because of my risk aversion, I prefer getting the one.

[rluzinski]

I'm not talking about the squeeze play (safety/suicide or otherwise) The batter has nothing to do with the contact play. It's NOT a hit and run.

 

I swear I've heard a hit and run sometimes referred to as a contact play. My mistake, apparently.

 

Also, I agree that very few times the batter ends up at second base on the contact play. That is more due to poor awareness, coaching, execution and understanding of baserunning than a strategic thing... They [the Brewers] should be able to run it more effectively than they do.

 

This addresses one of my other concerns. We need to know what the odds of getting the runner to second are. It is not 100%. If it was then yes, with 1 out, it would make sense to always run it. What is the real number? I have no idea.

[Oxy]

 

This addresses one of my other concerns. We need to know what the odds of getting the runner to second are. It is not 100%. If it was then yes, with 1 out, it would make sense to always run it. What is the real number? I have no idea.

 

Actually, it is impossible to actually run the stats to know how successful the play is, because we don't know how often the play is on. All we as fans see is the times when a player gets thrown out at home. We all completely forget the times that a guy grounds out, the guy from third scores, and the player at first is retired. Perhaps the only reason a guy scored in this scenario is because the contact play was on so he was able to get a big lead and not perseverate about "should I stay or should I go?." Since he is all go all the time when the play is on, the fielder never even has an opportunity to throw home (or chooses not to) and takes the safe out at first. This is STILL a successful contact play. A run is a big deal.

[Thurston Fluff]

I'm sure there is still a time and a place for it, as with most strategies. I just thing RR attempts one much too often. The odds of success are very much dependent on whether the defenders are ready for one and obviously, the Brewers have lost that advantage (opponents are positioning for the bunt attempt now). The good thing is that RR can now leverage that fact into greater odds of a base hit. I hope he does just that.

 

I think you hit on something here that is so hard to measure. How can you measure the effect doing the squeeze play has on production in squeeze situations that the team chooses not to do it. Pulling guys in to defend it means a higher chance of getting a base hit so doing it enough makes it more likely not doing it will end in a better results as well. This is just a personal opinion but I tend to think the more you make the opponent have to account for the better your chances of success. I think in the end it makes up for the outs made by being aggressive. That said I have no problem with a manager going the other direction. I think the key for success is consistency of following one philosophy more than which philosophy is followed.

[Oxy]

Pulling guys in to defend it means a higher chance of getting a base hit so doing it enough makes it more likely not doing it will end in a better results as well. This is just a personal opinion but I tend to think the more you make the opponent have to account for the better your chances of success. I think in the end it makes up for the outs made by being aggressive. That said I have no problem with a manager going the other direction. I think the key for success is consistency of following one philosophy more than which philosophy is followed.

 

Ha! I was actually thinking the opposite. In that the more the opponent prepares for the execution of your own "normal" philosophy, the more the opposite philosophy will work. Therefore it is better to be flexible and understand the situation to know when one strategy is more or less likely to work than it is to rigidly stick with one tactic. I do love that fact that running the squeeze plays often brings in the defenders for the reasons that rluz stated. It is also nice to keep your players mentally sharp and into the game. The more it is run, the better your players will be able to execute it when it is needed.

[Oxy]

You end up in a worse base/out state when you fail at a contact play than if you just get an out at 1B. I forgot to take into consideration that you would probably give up the out anyway. Still you would need it to work more than just occasionally for it to be worth it.

 

The contact play seems to be such a bad idea because it hardly ever works and you usually end up in a worse base out state. The contact play and a lot of other small ball strategy along with avoiding strikeouts seems to be High School and lower level strategy where the fielders are not quite as good and are much more prone to mistakes. The fielders, even the bad ones, are so much better that you need to do more than just put the ball in play.

 

Look at the actual numbers behind the "worse base out state." That's what I was pointing to earlier when I stated that you only score between .05 and .1 runs more when one of your baserunners is on first rather than second, or second rather than third. This means that it "hardly ever" has to work in order for it to be effective. Like 1/20 times. The thing is, as I stated in my previous post, we don't actually know when a run scores because the contact play was on and when that run would have scored anyway, thus it's impossible to actually run the statistics to see if it's a good or bad strategy. I am of the opinion that managers have always known that it's a good play, but fans (and players) HATE getting guys thrown out at the plate (especially if they're out by a large margin) so it fell out of favor because it just wasn't worth educating people about it. With the growth of sabermetrics and more educated baseball fans I bet you'll see it being run a lot more often.

[jerichoholicninja]

Not sure if anyone read the little article in Sports Illustrated about the Yankees and Orioles hitting lots of homeruns. It said that this year homeruns are up and hits and walks are down, meaning that bunting is more of a bad idea than usual.

[rluzinski]

Without knowing how often the trail runner gets to second on a contact play, I don't understand why you can be so certain about anything. I would also like to know how often no outs and two outs are recorded.

[Baldkin]

Without knowing how often the trail runner gets to second on a contact play, I don't understand why you can be so certain about anything. I would also like to know how often no outs and two outs are recorded.

 

What Russ said.

 

You are making the assumption that running the contact play with runners on the corners will ALWAYS end up with guys on 2nd and 3rd if the guy gets thrown out at home. This is an incorrect assumption.

 

I'd imagine they end up in that state about 3% of the time. If that.

[Oxy]

Without knowing how often the trail runner gets to second on a contact play, I don't understand why you can be so certain about anything. I would also like to know how often no outs and two outs are recorded.

 

What Russ said.

 

You are making the assumption that running the contact play with runners on the corners will ALWAYS end up with guys on 2nd and 3rd if the guy gets thrown out at home. This is an incorrect assumption.

 

I'd imagine they end up in that state about 3% of the time. If that.

 

I'm actually not making that assumption at all. That's kind of an extreme example of what should happen if we had nine Paul Molitors on the team. It should happen more often than it does. My main point is that I think a lot of runs score from 3rd when the play is on that wouldn't score if the play wasn't on. The fielder just throws to first and the run scores and nobody blinks an eye. Some of those wouldn't happen if it was left up to the runner to decide and he is afraid of getting thrown out, so he stays put.

[topper09er]

Runners on first and third is automatic contact play to stay out of the double play, if a ball is hit too weakly to not turn 2 then you probably cant throw the runner out at the plate either. If it is hit sharply at someone R2, R1 1 out (.963 runs expected) is much better than R3 2 outs (.385 runs expected) so you always go home.

[Dollarbill13]

I think Oxy is underestimating the difficulty of staying in a rundown long enough for a guy to advance two bases while another is in a rundown. If a guy is in a rundown between third and home, there is a very real possibility of running into a double play if you have the batter try to advance to 2nd or a runner on 1st try to advance to 3rd.

[Oxy]

I think Oxy is underestimating the difficulty of staying in a rundown long enough for a guy to advance two bases while another is in a rundown. If a guy is in a rundown between third and home, there is a very real possibility of running into a double play if you have the batter try to advance to 2nd or a runner on 1st try to advance to 3rd.

 

That's kind of an extreme example of what should happen if we had nine Paul Molitors on the team. It should happen more often than it does. My main point is that I think a lot of runs score from 3rd when the play is on that wouldn't score if the play wasn't on. The fielder just throws to first and the run scores and nobody blinks an eye. Some of those wouldn't happen if it was left up to the runner to decide and he is afraid of getting thrown out, so he stays put.

[Dollarbill13]

I think I disagree with your second point. The only times when it would come into play is if the infield is back and there is a hard hit ball directly at one of them or when the infield is in and the ball is fielded by an infielder but either slowly hit or not directly at them, where the contact play is the difference between scoring and not scoring. I think it's next to impossible to quantify either but that's my perception.

[1992casey]

I think next year we will get a thread going with a running total of every time the squeeze play is attempted. We can than keep stats and debate from there!

That sounds like a very good idea as nobody seems to be making that stat handy.

 

It might be best to reserve a thread for recording the plays and do our debating elsewhere. A long thread that includes both debate and data could make accessing the data difficult.

[logan82]

This is just a personal opinion but I tend to think the more you make the opponent have to account for the better your chances of success.

I agree with this.

 

That said I have no problem with a manager going the other direction. I think the key for success is consistency of following one philosophy more than which philosophy is followed.

Wouldn't you be making the opponent account for more by being more flexible with your strategy? If the defense is playing back, you lay down a sac bunt. If they are playing up, swing away. By playing off the defense I would think you are giving yourself the best chance to succeed. I don't think it is good to keep bunting when everybody in the park knows it is coming. Of course there are always exceptions. By sticking with one strategy you are not making the defense account for as much.

[Thurston Fluff]

Ha! I was actually thinking the opposite. In that the more the opponent prepares for the execution of your own "normal" philosophy, the more the opposite philosophy will work.

 

 

Wouldn't you be making the opponent account for more by being more flexible with your strategy?

 

Guess I wasn't being very clear on what I meant. If you are an aggressive team be consistently aggressive. If you like to sit back and wait for the three run homer do that consistently. Overall don't have guys running wild one week then change and don't allow them to do so the next. Either way you go the players will have a better chance of succeeding in doing the things you want them to do well if they know that is what is going to be expected of them. On occasion it's fine to try to catch people off guard. Even then I think it's as easy to catch your own players off guard as it is the opponent. Expecting someone to get a squeeze down properly isn't as easy to do if you never do it for example. Yes it may catch the defense off guard but that doesn't mean the runner won't give it away or the batter can get a bunt down when he has never been asked to do it before. One missed sign or one aspect that gets poorly executed and the surprise element is negated. That is more likely to happen if the players mindset was never on doing such things.

[rluzinski]

Hey look, a contact play....

[Oxy]

Hey look, a contact play....

 

It actually worked the way it should once! Helps when Gomez and Segura are the runners. Well, it didn't "work" but it didn't hurt, anyway.

[lcbj68c]

Like somebody said...R1 and R3 is not a "contact play" situation. Because the defense is typically going to allow the run to score to attempt get the double play. And if they don't, barring an error, the runners are now R2 and R1. R2 and R3 is a contact play situation, but that doesn't play into Oxy's theory of "improving your base situation". R1, R2, R3 is also obviously not a "contact play" situation.

 

No, the situation of the "contact play" that drives me crazy is the lone baserunner, R3 less than two outs. Especially when there are no outs at the time. I'd love to see some stats on "runs scored in an inning after a R3 is thrown out at the plate with less than two outs" vs the mlb average of expecting a sac fly, passed ball, infield single, base hit, wild pitch, etc (basically anything that would score the runner had he stayed put and the contact play not been on).

[logan82]

The second link in post #15 gives run frequency for each base/out state. Runner at 3B with zero outs you score at least one run 86.4% of the time. Runner on 1B with one out you score at least 1 run 28.3% of the time. Runner on 3B with one out you score at least one run 66.2% of the time.

[Fear The Chorizo]

No, the situation of the "contact play" that drives me crazy is the lone baserunner, R3 less than two outs. Especially when there are no outs at the time. I'd love to see some stats on "runs scored in an inning after a R3 is thrown out at the plate with less than two outs" vs the mlb average of expecting a sac fly, passed ball, infield single, base hit, wild pitch, etc (basically anything that would score the runner had he stayed put and the contact play not been on).

 

Find me an example of the contact play definitely being put on with one runner on at 3rd and no outs. I would think that happens 0% of the time, even with managers who like to put it on. With one out, I'm fine with it if the on deck hitter is a pitcher or crappy hitter.