February 20, 2006
Brewer Bunting
The Milwaukee Brewers pitching staff had a problem sacrificing last season. Ned Yost is addressing it right away:
A large portion of the first official pitchers-and-catchers workout Sunday at Maryvale Baseball Park consisted of Brewers pitchers trying to bunt against their counterparts while nearly a dozen early arriving non-pitchers took their hacks against softer-tossing coaches on a different diamond.
"That's new this year," Yost said. "Our pitchers were the worst bunters in the stinkin' league last year and we've got to get better. They're going to work on it every day."
It's a little thing, probably only worth a few runs a season. But offensively, it's the only thing pitchers are required to do well. Good for Yost for trying to remove that weakness.
Posted by David Pinto at
09:07 AM
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Ned learned under Bobby Cox in Atlanta, who consistantly had the best-bunting pitchers in at least the NL. 5 or 6 extra wins a year can really make a difference
in Milwaukee
Having better bunting pitchers is no where near worth "5 or 6 extra wins."
According to some numbers from Dan Fox, the Brewers were about average in sacrifice attempts in 2005. 74.1% of their attempts were "successful", compared to an NL average of 74.8%. Even if they had matched Houston's NL leading 81.4% success rate, that would have resulted in 8 more successful sacrifices over the course of the year.
Considering the marginal value of a sacrifice to begin with, 8 sacrifices has an insignificant value. Moving a runner from 1st to 2nd (relative to just making an out) increases the chance of scoring atleast 1 run by about 13%. WOOPY.