 Baseball players have been bunting for a hundred years, but it was only recently that there has been a growing criticism of the strategy Let's look at why that is Like on base percentage never bunt has become one of the most quoted adages to come out of the whole money ball Book era revolution, whatever you want to call it and like many other things from that book It has been largely misunderstood and inaccurately used Things are a bit more nuanced than never bunt So let's look at two stats that show what the numbers really say and when it's okay to ignore them Every point in a baseball game exists in one of 24 base states and before you run away Not as complicated as it sounds base states are comprised of two things the number of outs There are and which bases there are runners on When the inning starts for example, we have no runners on base and zero outs. That's our first base state Leadoff guys say hits a single meaning there is now a runner on first base and nobody out That's a second base state. You can probably see where this is going. And so here is a chart of all 24 base states From there some really smart people have gone back through every game and found the average number of runs scored from each base state to the end of the inning and Based on that they've created something called a run expectancy chart, which for every game from 1993 to 2010 looks like this And even though I said every game you can find base state charts based on different ball parks years or run environments It'll be different for example in Colorado where there's a lot more run scored than say San Francisco Which is more of a pitchers park Note the typical bunting situation on this chart with a runner on first base and nobody out an average of 0.941 runs will score in that inning a sacrifice bond moves the runner to second base with one out Meaning the team at that point will only score 0.721 runs on average So this is one place we can see why bunting is discouraged again Keep in mind This is not some complicated mathematical formula with arbitrary benchmarks and that most people can't understand this is simply counting what has actually happened and it's telling us that an Out is almost always more valuable to your team that a runner moving up one base One thing that run expectancy does not take into account is the inning or the score when guys are bunting late in the game They are not concerned with maximizing the number of runs scored They're simply trying to score one run to tie the game or to go ahead That's where this next chart is helpful the chance that a single run will score in the inning based on each base state Again, we see that while we have a 44 percent chance to score a run with a runner on first and nobody out We have a 41 percent chance to score with a runner on second base and one out It's not a huge difference, but it's not helping One change we can see is that bunting a runner from second to third base does increase the chances of scoring runs 63 to 67 percent, but that's only if there's nobody out when the bunt is laid down Our second tool, which we won't spend so long on is something I encourage you to incorporate into your viewing experience once or twice And this is win expectancy. It is similar to run expectancy But it also incorporates the score the inning and the run environment The result is the chance that each team has to win the game based on their current situation and How teams in the past have fared in that same situation? So for example, this is a win expectancy chart of the 2014 a wild card game between the A's and the Royals You can see that Kansas City had somewhere around a 3 percent chance to win at one point in the eighth inning a 70 percent chance to win in the 11th back down to a 10 percent chance in the 12th before of course they won People often criticize numbers for taking emotion out of the game But I think these numbers here show pretty clearly how amazing the game was and it doesn't in an objective fashion You can see these charts on fan graphs calm And I will put in a link in the description where you can find them It's pretty neat to watch it as the game plays out in real time So when can we bunt? Neither run or win expectancy take into account the quality of the hitter at the plate or the pitcher on the mound Both are based on averages So in that game that we just looked at Kansas City bunted four times All four of them had a negative impact on the win their win expectancy But that might not necessarily tell the whole story two of the bunts were from one of the weakest hitters on the team When you have a poor hitter or especially a pitcher at the plate Laying down a bunt is often the right call as it's going to be more likely He will get the bunt down than it is he will get a hit another of Kansas City's bunt came from a Below average hitter on their team, but he also had the speed and a knack for being able to bunt for base hits So this is another important thing that you want to make sure that the guy who you have bunting is actually a competent bunter and he can Get the bunt down if called on to do so So the phrase never bunt is only really the case if every batter and every pitcher in the game is average And even then there are a few exceptions. There are no real games in which every player is average though There are plenty of situations where the numbers are fine with bunting It just takes some time to figure them out and even if you make the wrong call There's still always some chance that you're going to store anyway It might not be a surprise the teams like the A's the Red Sox and the Astros who are all known for their statistical departments Were three of the least likely teams to lay down a sacrifice bunt this past season But bunts have been on the decline over the past few seasons league wide But like it or not small ball and bunting will always play some part in baseball