Wait a minute, I know what you're thinking: Here's another drunk rant saying that players should magically adjust their swings and hit to the oppositive field. Give this guy his meds. If adjusting swings were easy, everybody would do it. OK, OK, turn off the italics, Mr. Inner Thought. Listen: I do understand that trying to change a successful major league hitter's stance can do more harm than good.
But I don't buy it that these sluggers can't learn to bunt.
Sorry, folks. I. Do. Not. Accept. It. Bunting is not redirecting your swing. Bunting means having to put in extra time with a coach. It means honing the skill in March, taking 50 bunts every day in the cage. I do not want Yankees to change their swings. But if the defense intends to give Mark Teixeira the entire left side of the infield, I cannot understand why he does not accept this bountiful gift. I've seen David Ortiz lay down bunts, especially when he leads of an inning in a wide-margin game. It does not require a guy to change his entire style. (Take that, Mr. Thought Process.)
Which brings us to Teixeira... the most important Yankee in 2014. If Tex comes back, we have a chance. If he doesn't, forget it. We're more likely to finish last. But Tex will once again face heavy overshifts, the ones that dramatically reduced his value as a hitter. He went from a near .300 hitter to a near .220. If Tex can drop down - say - 20 bunt-singles this year, he could not only raise his average to respectability, but he might force those overshifts to soften. (And he might lead off an inning with a pitcher stewing over the fact that the overshift allowed Tex to take an easy base.)
The problem might not reside in our players. It might be Yankee Stadium, where the right field porch has a strange effect on some LH hitters. They start trying to pull every ball, to hit 60 HRs. It destroyed Jason Giambi. It destroyed Granderson. I worry about what it might do to Brian McCann and maybe even Carlos Beltran, when he bats LH. We have a team of big sluggers. We could hit a lot of HRs. But will they come with people on base?
Expect to see huge overshifts on Yankee batters all year.
So... will our sluggers this spring show the commitment needed to learn the art of bunting?
And will Mr. Girardi demand it?
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20 comments:
I suppose it's just too much to ask a ballplayer to adjust his swing to exploit a situation. Can't diminish the delicate biomechanical/psychological perfection of Teixeira's swing nor the thrill of ground balls and line drives never finding a holes.
It just seems ludicrous that Tex & Co cannot make adjustments to punish all teams using these extreme shifts,,,,, at least attempt to exploit it, jeeeze, is a bunt THAT difficult?????!
They won't learn to bunt. Girardi will not make them, it's a bad career move (unhappy players making big money...not what organizations want in a manager).
Bunting is not manly. It's too Rizutto-like. Big men take big swings. They never bunt. They don't get paid to bunt, they get paid to clout.
Giambi's problem wasn't swinging for the fence, it was recovering from steroid withdrawal. Granderson is another story. Tex is another story.
The new guys will hopefully be a different story from those stories. Real men are spray hitters and have power to all fields. Ask the Mick. Ask A-Rod (in better days). Jacoby may have one of the dorkiest names in the majors, but let's hope he knows that.
And let's hope Beltran's legs can at least get him to the plate.
el duque--
So what have you gained by this? You pad the batting average by maybe ten points with a few dribbling weak infield singles but cut substantially into slugging percentage and run production. That's playing the opponents' game. This is a losing strategy--the seeming gain in average is overridden by the loss in power and run production.
You might be able to drive a Corvette at a slower speed to save gas, but that's not what a Corvette is built for.
Again--this is just playing into the hands of the enemy.
You all have Obama's foreign baseball policy. You absolutely bunt, so that you don't have to bunt in the future. Showalter/Putin invade one side of the field to attract your attention there. So go somewhere else and spread them out again. They defend where you attack, and if you attack everywhere, they'll defend everywhere. Bunt the first few games and the shift ends.
That is preposterous. Serious baseball managers do not align their infielders based on a tiny sample of aberrant bunting behavior--they study hit-direction charts for an entire season. No one's going to be fooled if you bunt once or twice--they will still defend against your strength. They would be DELIGHTED if Mark Teixeira wastes fifty at-bats per season laying bunts down the third-base line instead of swinging for the right-field porch.
and I would be delighted if Tex should bat 0.500 whenever the shift is on, especially if what we need are base runners.
Eighth inning. Yanks down by four. Teixeira leading off, batting LH. Defense shifted entirely to the right side.
If he practices bunts, really commits himself to working on them, isn't it a good idea to lay one down and get on base? Or would you prefer that he swing away, into the teeth of the defense? Is it not a good idea to have another strategy? Or would prefer that he swing away, right into the net?
He might hit a HR. That will look on his season totals, eh? I'm talking about being smart. Better we should not be?
But...but, Duque! Th..th..the statistics! St..st..statistics are more important than playing the game! God forbid we cut into Tex' slugging percentage. And surely you know it's important to keep up the run production by grounding into a double play with four infielders on the right side, rather than actually get an easy hit bunting or slapping to left.
I'm shocked...shocked...that you don't know this important Sabremetric. *Gasp* (That's how shocked I am. I used asterisks.)
By the way, if he comes up in the eighth with men on, I bet you any money he could bunt and get it past third, knock in one run at least. Bunt doubles. Wow, what a concept.
What I pay to watch is the complex game of baseball. What Tex seems intent to deliver is some kind of in-game home run derby.
It's possible that there might be a half dozen instances throughout the season when Teixeira would want to lay down a bunt to push across a tying or winning run late in the game. But to propose this as a chronic option for a power hitter is just daft, as you seem to be doing, el duque, essentially defanging a key part of your power attack.
John M. is just sputtering incoherently, slathering on the 'tude because he's incapable of framing a rational argument. You win games by scoring runs. You score runs by driving in runs. You drive in runs MAINLY by hitting the ball into the gaps and over the fence--that's the modern game. That's what hitters like Teixeira are built for, shifts or no. Pardon me if a run is a "stat," but runs win games, not archaic strategic hobby horses or quaint customs like spitting tobacco juice.
If you want to board your Wayback Machine and set the dial to 1910, you can watch guys bunt all day long, because they were batting against a dead, beat-up, scuffed-up ball that could not be hit into the gaps or over the fence. Yet the strategic mentality of 100 years ago still lingers over the deadheads of fans like John. M.
In fact, it's been known for at least thirty years now--since the publication of The Hidden Game of Baseball by Palmer and Thorn--that sacrifice bunts (to take only that example for the moment), when performed by anyone but the most abysmal hitters (such as pitchers) actually reduce your chances of scoring WHEN THEY SUCCEED. Yes, even when you advance the runner, by giving up the out, you have reduced your probability of scoring.
But the deadheads, immune to fact and logic, keep wanting to see bunts.
The Yankees' opposing managers can only hope that their mindless quacking succeeds in drowning out serious analysis.
(I removed this a few minutes ago because there was a bad typo that turned a sentence on its head. This is better:)
I'm a deadhead!! Wow, and I don't even like the Grateful Dead.
Constantly hitting into the shift because a particular AB might be one of 25 (out of 600) that produces a HR, or let's say 50 and throw in the doubles...yeah, that's good statistical work right there. Those 8.25% of ABs are worth killing rallies, and/or hitting into DPs.
Considering that hitting into the shift is bringing Tex's average down to .230 or so...well, NOT taking advantage of the shift as much as possible seems like the stupid play. (Of course, you'd have to teach the big galoot to bunt decently, not a given, I suppose.)
The central tenet of Moneyball is that the team who gets more guys on base through high OBPs wins more games. Nothing has disproved that statistical fact since Beane and his guys realized it years ago.
In fact, we're not saying take the bat out of Tex's hands. We're saying, let him use it to get on base more often. And if he does it often enough, he will effect how much the shift is used against him by not being an easy out...statistically speaking.
Sacrifice bunts are debatable, I don't like 'em either. The only thing they're better than is hitting into a DP.
John M. presumes to pronounce upon the main insight of Moneyball--the very Moneyball that he usually dismisses out of hand--as on-base percentage. Nothing could more clearly demonstrate that he has never read a single book on the subject.
Mark Teixeira's declining fortunes at the plate are only marginally affected by the shifts he faces. Ted Williams and Babe Ruth faced the same shifts yet compiled eye-popping lifetime batting numbers and rightly refused to lay down their main weapons by dropping down impotent dribblers.
Mark Teireira's feeble BA is a function of age and decrepitude, not defensive alignment. If John M. would like to provide any documentation that an infield overshift alone can produce a drastic decline in BA or any other offensive measure, let him put or shut up.
Teixiera's main offensive talent is slugging. Without that, on a given at-bat, he's a pitcher at the plate. Might as well put CC up there to pinch-hit for him if you're going to have Tex bunt as much you seem to want him to.
I can't waste any more time trying to furnish an elementary education in baseball to illiterates. I pass the baton to someone with more patience.
The Bambino sacrifice-bunted over a hundred times in his career...you could look it up.
Ruth might have sacrifice-bunted at the behest of his managers, who were still steeped in the "wisdom" of the small-ball era even when dealing with a behemoth like Ruth. But the Babe never tried to bunt or slap against a shift for a hit. He even commented once that he could have hit .500 one year just slapping the ball to the left side, but he would have sacrificed too much power and run production.
This is all about doing whatever it takes to win games. I have seen David Ortiz lay down bunts and take first base in situations when having a baserunner is far more important than hitting a home run.
I don't see why we cannot do it, too. And I think it's totally daft to react to an overshift by swinging harder and trying to pull the ball even more - which seems to have been Granderson's reaction over the last two years.
I didn't want to be hitting on Teixeira so much. He has a bigger issue - his wrist. But I'm mostly fearful that McCann will get Giambi-itis - come to the Yankees as an all-fields hitter, and then turn into a dead pull slog.
Anonymous' argument:
Tex is old and feeble, and his only value lies in his 25 dingers. The other 575 times he comes up, he can make an out, and that's fine, as long as we get the 25 dingers. Bases loaded? Guy on second? Tight game? Go for the fence, ignore the overshift, pretend the left side of the infield doesn't exist.
Yes, this makes perfect sense.
I have obviously wasted 45 years of my life watching baseball and know nothing. It's dispiriting, but somehow I'll try to move forward.
Let's just hope the new guys don't screw up their swings and production by going for the porch all the time. Though I'm not sure now...that might be exactly what they should be doing.
Derek can be of one final great service to the Yanks: teach Tex the Jeterian swing. Tex can then find the right field porch batting right and the right field shift will disappear while batting left. Besides, if there is no Jeterian swing next year, how will the Master achieve wood?
el duque--you've seen Ortiz lay down a bunt to foil the shift in selected situations. But you could count the instances on the fingers of one hand. That's the point. If you want Tex to do it a half dozen times a year, fine. But people in this thread are talking about something more pervasive than that--to the point of one delusional poster believing that if Tex bunts two or three times in the first ocuple of games no one will shift on him again--that kind of nonsense. At most, it should be a rare surprise tactic, not a constant strategy.
As for John M.s self-pitying vacuous ramble, the less said the better. He has shown himself to be capable of mainly emotive, philistine, ignorant rants. But we can agree on one key point--he has watched baseball for 45 years and learned nothing--at least nothing worth belaboring on this list.
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