Cleveland Indians Win, 4-3: Was Manny Acta Right to Call For Bunts?
The sabermetric revolution has called much of what managers do into question. Intentional walks are almost always bad ideas. Stealing bases is worth it only if the runner is almost always successful. And sacrificing outs to move runners over is a mistake in almost every situation.
While guys like Ozzie Guillen and Dusty Baker have been slow to embrace this new philosophy, Cleveland Indians manager Manny Acta gets it. In 2007, when he was with the Washington Nationals, he said:
“It’s been proven to me that a guy at first base with no outs has a better chance to score than a guy at second base with one out. That has been proven to me with millions of at-bats. I don’t like moving guys over from first to second unless the pitcher is up or it is real late in the game.”
Does he practice what he preaches? In two separate key situations in Thursday night’s 4-3 victory over the Oakland Athletics, an Indians hitter attempted to bunt (neither was successful). Let’s take a look to see whether he had the right idea.
The first situation came in the top of the sixth. With the Tribe trailing 1-0, Lou Marson had singled to lead off the inning, and Michael Brantley stepped in to face Brett Anderson with a runner on first and no one out. Brantley initially intended to bunt Marson over, but his first-pitch bunt attempt was foul.
Was it the right move? Not according to The Hardball Times’ Win Probability Inquirer. Assuming a neutral 4.5 run environment, an away team down by one run in the top of the sixth with one on and no out—i.e., the Indians’ situation as Brantley walked to the plate—has a 39.69% chance of winning the game. The same situation with one out and a runner on second—as was, presumably, the plan—yields a win expectancy of 36.75%.
In other words, a sacrifice bunt in that situation would have cost the Tribe 2.94% of a victory. Not a good move. That might not sound like much, but if Acta avoided a mistake like that every game, it would add 4.8 wins to the Tribe’s end-of-season total—the equivalent of replacing last year’s Justin Masterson and Fausto Carmona with Tim Lincecum and CC Sabathia.
As an added bonus, by not bunting, Brantley ended up on second base and Marson advanced to third. Both were driven in when Asdrubal Cabrera singled on the next pitch to give the Tribe a 2-1 lead.
The other bunt attempt came in the eight inning. With Cleveland still up by one, Cabrera stepped to the plate with one out and Lou Marson (fresh off his first career triple) on third. After watching a called strike and a ball go by, he showed his intentions by bunting a pitch foul.
Was Acta right to call for the suicide squeeze? Interestingly, the WPA Inquirer says yes. A visiting team up by one run with a runner on third and one out has an 80.60% chance of holding onto its lead. By contrast, an away team in the top of the eighth with two outs and the bases empty but a two-run lead will come out on top 84.44% of the time.
Had the bunt been successful, it would have given the Indians an extra 3.84% chance of staying ahead. Over a full season, that kind of managing would be almost as valuable as replacing the 2010 model of Luis Valbuena with Chase Utley.
Unfortunately, forced to swing normally with two strikes, Cabrera ended up striking out. Too bad the original plan didn’t work out.
What should we take away from this? The first bunt was a bad idea, and I’d love to hear an explanation for Austin Kearns and Jack Hannahan’s ridiculous double-steal attempt in the 12th inning. But the great call for the squeeze in the eighth inning showed that Acta knows what he’s doing.
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[...] the intangible ideals of traditionally minded analysts, Acta knows his game theory. Even if he doesn’t always show it, his strategy is based on reason and logic, not the unwritten rules of [...]
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[...] he preaches. On multiple occasions this year, he’s called for sacrifice bunts at times that hurt the team’s win probability, thrown caution into the wind on the basepaths, and been too stuck in the save-situation [...]
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[...] at Wahoo Blues, we’ve given Acta a lot of flack this year for things like bunting at the wrong times, keeping Matt LaPorta at the bottom of the order, and saving closer Chris Perez for traditional [...]
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Pleeeaaaze!
Bring this up again when robots take the field. You sabermetric junkies misuse stats horribly, taking the fun out everything. Manny was there, Manny made the call. Stop reducing baseball to a math exercise.
How exactly is this a “misuse” of stats? If you prefer to go with your gut and judge strategy with unsubstantiated subjectivism, be my guest, but your distaste for logic isn’t an intellectually sound argument.