Big on small ball

For the second straight day, the winning run in the Twins game came scored when a team tried to bunt the go-ahead run from second to third and the defense not only couldn't take the offered out but threw the ball away.

On Monday it was the Twins' Logan Morrison failing; on Tuesday it was Luke Gregerson of the Cardinals.

Gregerson's miscue is a good example of why I believe the bunt is an underrated play. It makes a pitcher get off the mound and do something out of the routine. That seems to challenge many pitchers, even in the big leagues. That it was on Byron Buxton -- who can motor even when hampered by that hairline fracture in his big toe -- added to the challenge.

Morrison's error doesn't fit my rationale. because he's not a pitcher. And while some first basemen wind up at the position to minimize their need to throw, Morrison is a first baseman because he's not a fast enough runner to play outfield competently.

But the Morrison play did involve a really fast runner -- Dee Gordon was the man on second, and Morrison wanted to make the play at third. He threw the ball away when he had to go to Plan B.

---

One other comment: Bobby Wilson, RBI machine. The catcher hit a two-run homer after the Buxton bunt/Gregerson error. That's five RBIs in as many games for him. It won't last, but enjoy it while it does.

On bunts and shifts

Brian Dozier's complaint about Chance Sisco's bunt on Sunday drew enough blowback Monday that he tried to defend it by noting that the Orioles had not held Ryan LeMarre on first in the top of the ninth:

“When they didn’t hold our runner on, they conceded to the fact they didn’t want us to steal, so we didn’t steal.”

I'm not going to try to sort out that sentence or hunt for the logic in it. I'm more interested in posing and exploring this question: Why are bunts against the shift so rare that a veteran such as Dozier can believe that doing so violates the game's ethics?

Let's begin by making and testing these assertions:

• Teams shift to get more outs than they would get playing in a conventional alignment.
• Teams shift in the belief that the specific hitter either will not or cannot adjust to take advantage of the open spaces OR
• if he does, that the result is an acceptable tradeoff for keeping the hitter from pulling the ball.

The first seems rather self-evident, although Joe Posnanski also sees a mind-games element to the strategy. Which ties into the second point. Hitting is difficult, and the shift arguably plays with the hitter's mind.

The third might be the most interesting one. Posnanski writes that researchers believe Ted Williams, the most famous inspiration for overshifts, went 13-for-16 bunting against those shifts, "a sweet little .813 average."

OK, let's knock that down a little. Let's say that your typical left-handed hitter facing a shift -- someone like Sisco -- can bunt .600 against the shift. Let's further concede that that will all be singles, with no walks or HBPs, so that .600 batting average on bunts translates to a .600 on-base percentage and a .600 slugging percentage.

I differentiate here between righties and lefties because there is a significant difference in the shifts. The shifts Dozier faces leave the first baseman still relatively close to the bag, because somebody has to take the throw. The shift Sisco bunted against had nobody near third and thus all he had to do was get the bunt past Berrios. It's a little more difficult to bunt against the right-handed shift, but hardly impossible.

Anyway, back to our bunter with the theoretical slash line of .600/.600/.600. How many hitters can reasonably expect an OPS of 1.200 swinging away? Barry Bonds at his steroidal peak. Williams had a few years in that vicinity. The likes of Chance Sisco or Max Kepler can only dream of such heights.

And.600 seems fairly conservative, especially for someone like Kepler or Eddie Rosario, who can actually run. It might be something closer to .800, and even Bonds and Williams didn't put up 1.600 OPSes.

If hitters bunted aggressively against overshifts, the shifts would quickly disappear. If Kepler bunted everytime he came up against a shift that left third base open, teams would quickly stop shifting against him. Why make him a .600 or .750 hitter? It might take only one game for the shifts to stop.

Nobody's tried that yet, however. Maybe it's because hitters doubt their ability to bunt even when there is no defense offered. Maybe they believe it's a surrender to the opposition or an admission of weakness. I have a colleague who derides bunting as "skirt ball."

Just because Williams responded to the shift with defiance doesn't make that the right approach for everybody.

On bunts and no-hitters

Jose Berrios was spectacular on Sunday, and the Twins won 7-0. Then they turned the spotlight away from their young hurler to a ninth-inning bunt single by Baltimore's Chance Sisco, which they termed "bush league" and "not good baseball."

Nonsense. Berrios to that point had pitched out of the stretch to exactly one batter. The O's needed baserunners -- and, crucially, the Twins were in an overshift, with three infielders on the right side against the left-handed Sisco.

If' it's not good form to bunt for a hit when down seven, why is it good form to be in an overshift when up seven? The illogic in the position espoused by Brian Dozier, Eddie Rosario and Berrios himself is glaring.

Sisco reached base and triggered the closest thing Baltimore had to a rally all day. His bunt wasn't "bad baseball." It was good baseball, and the Twins shouldn't be complaining.

You don't want him to bunt? Don't overshift him. He's a slow catcher. It's that easy.

I suspect that part of the Twins angst over the Sisco bunt was the very real possibility that the one hit allowed by Berrios to that point could be changed to an error. It was a fly ball hit by Sisco with two out in the third Eddie Rosario got a glove on at the warning track but couldn't hang on. The scorer ruled it a double.

In the Twins TV booth, Bert Blyleven and Dick Bremer agreed. Me, I thought it was a ball that should have been caught.

Those are subjective opinions. For a more objective call:

The first hit by Chance Sisco in the third inning was a misplay by Eddie Rosario. It had a catch percentage of 90 percent, per Statcast. He needed to cover 83 feet in 5.6 seconds.

— Rhett Bollinger (@RhettBollinger) April 1, 2018

Ball's caught 90 percent of the time? Yeah, there's grounds to appeal that call.

Cisco's bunt single made that point moot in terms of getting a no-hitter, and later in the inning, Berrios gave up a clean single. So he got a three-hit shutout. I'll take that.

Now, let's play a what-if. Say the official scorer had ruled that third-inning fly an error. Would the Twins still have conceded the bunt to Sisco in the ninth? My guess is they would, and I still wouldn't be irritated if Sisco bunted with a no-hitter on the line. I don't know when that "unwritten rule" of not bunting late to break up a no-hitter came into being, but the literature of no-hitters is riddled with attempted ninth-inning bunts.

Sisco was competing, not surrendering. Good for him.

Thoughts from the Twins opener

* Kramarczuk's is still so good.

* The first-level concourse was almost impassible, a chronic condition on opening day when Target Field is sold out and a goodly number of fans flock to the standing room areas and the heat lamps. It may have appeared on TV that there were a lot of empty seats. I can assure you, the people were there.

* The Kansas City bullpen ain't what it was in their World Series years.

* The lineup against lefty Danny Duffy was ... restricted. The Twins had, by necessity and choice, four lefties in the lineup, none of whom at this point in their careers should be expected to be productive against a southpaw of Duffy's quality. Joe Mauer slashed .224/.291/.319 against lefties lat year; he hit cleanup. Jason Castro slashed .149/.237/.241; he hit sixth. Max Kepler and Eddie Rosario slashed .203/.273/.322 and .263/.305/.289 respectively; they hit eighth and ninth.

The problem: With Robbie Grossman as the DH, there is no viable right-handed hitting alternative on the roster to Mauer, Kepler and Rosario. Chris Gimenez would be a reasonable platoon mate to Castro, but Paul Molitor has indicated that he's not going with a strict platoon behind the plate. And, to be sure, even Earl Weaver wouldn't be platooning Kepler or Rosario at their ages. So we're likely to see more of this.

* The game itself turned on a pair of bunts, which merits a deep dive.

Bottom of the seventh, 1-1 tie, the Royals pull  Duffy. In 2014 and April of 2015, that probably means the gas-throwing Kelvim Herrera, with Wade Davis for the eighth and Greg Holland in the ninth, and the Twins' best shot at winning is getting to extra innings. But Holland blew his arm out late in 2015, and Davis is a Cub now, and Herrera is the closer. As said above, the Royals bullpen isn't what it was.

So with a switch-hitter (Jorge Polanco) followed by a pair of left-handed hitters (Kepler and Rosario) due up, K.C. manager Ned Yost goes to Matt Strahm, a lefty making his major league debut.

Polanco singles. Kepler is asked to bunt. He fouls his first attempt, and the 2016 Twins pattern of horrendous bunting seems very much in continuation. But his next one is ideal, and Strahm, despite help from the first base ump, can't throw him out. Thanks to replay, two on, no out, and Rosario is asked to bunt. He gets it down for a sac. The Royals put Brian Dozier on, and then Strahm walks Robbie Grossman to force in a run ...

But it's the bunting I want to comment on, not four walks in five hitters. Let's say that Kepler merely got a sac bunt, not a hit. In that case, Rosario has to hit, not bunt, against the lefty and the whole inning changes. A mere sacrifice from Kepler puts the inning squarely on Rosario and Grossman (there's no way Yost was going to pitch to Dozier with first base open). 

For that matter, I question Yost's decision to stick with Strahm after Rosario's bunt with Dozier-Grossman-Byron Buxton coming up -- two righties with switch-hitter who is better against lefties. Peter Moylan (who did come in to strike out Buxton) might have fared better; He couldn't have done worse than Strahm.

Seeing the two young left-handed hitters get the bunt down against a lefty was encouraging, and the inning certainly broke in the Twins favor. But they needed some help to make it work.

One throw made, one not

Wednesday's was a bad loss for the Twins in many ways. Rain delay at the start, early deficit, rally to take the lead, cough the lead up in the ninth, rally to tie, get the first two on in the 10th and strand both of them ... it all added up to an opportunity to gain on a playoff spot wasted.

There are several plays and players who could be commented on here, but I shall limit myself to two similar plays -- two closers who had to get off the bound, field a soft-hit ball and make a throw to first base. This is an aspect of pitching that seems lost on many power pitchers, and both Bruce Rondon of the Tigers and Kevin Jepsen of the Twins are power pitchers.

Jepsen's play came first. The leadoff batter in the top of the ninth, Victor Martinez, hit a dribbler to the third base side of the mound. V-Mart is one of the slowest runners in the American League -- he's old, he wasn't fast when young, he's a former catcher and he's had knee injuries. But Jepsen reacted to the dribbler as if it were Byron Buxton, or at least Danny Santana, heading to first base. He barehanded the ball and made a spinning, off-balance throw to first.

It's no surprise that he bounced the throw. The wonder is that he didn't heave it down the right field line or into the camera well. I will concede that Joe Mauer probably should have been able to handle the throw anyway, but no official scorer is going to charge the first baseman with an error on a bouncing throw. Martinez was credited with a single, which is a gift to the DH. In my view, Jepsen, confronted with the need to make an unforeseen play, panicked. And that started the two-run ninth.

Rondon had his chance in the bottom of the inning, when Buxton was asked to sacrifice. Unlike Jepsen, Rondon knew ahead of time that he was probably going to have to make a play. Buxton's bunt wasn't great, and Rondon didn't make a great throw -- he lobbed the ball to first, and Buxton made it a closer play than it should have been. But Rondon did get his out, uncomfortable as he appeared in the role.

It has long been my observation that most power pitchers are poor fielders, and it has long been my contention that, aside from the difficulty of bunting fastballs in the upper 90s, forcing such pitchers to get off the mound and make plays would be a fruitful strategy. This applies to both Jepsen and Rondon. But on Wednesday, Rondon made his play. Jepsen didn't.

Nolasco, Milone and Mauer's bunt

This is Ricky Nolasco's
third time on the
disabled list in
11 momths.

As it happened, it was apparently an easy call. Ricky Nolasco tried to throw a bullpen session Thursday morning in Boston and knew immediately that he can't pitch.

So the easy way to get Tommy Milone on the active roster was the way followed. Nolasco is said to be headed to a CT scan now that the team has returned to Minnesota. Given the language used so far to describe the ankle -- the word "impingement" has been used -- I won't be at all surprised if he has surgery in short order.

---

Milone had a "Blackburn" in his return to the rotation -- a start without a strikeout. Not a real impressive linescore -- five innings, nine hits and a walk, four runs allowed. The defense didn't help a lot early on, but he also threw a couple of gopher balls.

He'll have better starts, I'm sure. With Ervin Santana now about a month away from returning, he'll need to. And this was actually the best of Milone's three career starts in Fenway Park, long regarded as a graveyard for left-handed pitchers.

---

My Twitter feed featured a lot of commentary about the Joe Mauer bunt in the ninth inning that resulted in a Red Sox error and the first of four runs for the Twins in the inning.

It wasn't a good bunt, and as it turned out, a bad bunt was good for the Twins. The Sox botched the play, perhaps because it took them by surprise. Surprise is a stressor, and this Red Sox team is getting a reputation as a poor defensive team. Or, more broadly, a poor fundamental team; some of their baserunning Wednesday was of the TOOTBLAN category (Thrown Out On The Bases Like A Nincompoop).

I don't want to see a steady diet of Mauer sacrifices -- if that's on the agenda, he shouldn't be hitting in the top half of the order -- but I'm hardly opposed to the call, and wouldn't have been had it been a routine sac bunt. Unpredictability is an optimal strategic state.

On the (attempted) Santana bunt

Danny Santana:
A 1-for-5 night
with a failed bunt.

The Twins on Tuesday night, having frittered away a 5-0 lead, came into the bottom of the seventh trailing 7-5. They opened the frame with a pair of infield hits (Eduardo Escobar and Eduardo Nunez). This brought up Danny Santana -- who tried, and failed, to bunt the Eduardos over, then struck out. That was followed by a Brian Dozier popup and a Joe Mauer ground out, inning over.

The Santana bunt is a questionable call on Ron Gardenhire's part. I'm not as critical of it as Derek Wetmore is in this piece, but it certainly ought not be viewed by the manager as an "automatic" decision.

The percentage-based objection to a bunt in that situation -- runners on second and first, no outs -- is that, as Wetmore details in the linked piece above,  it reduces "run expectancy" for that inning from 1.556 runs to 1.447 runs.

The thing about run expectancy charts is that the charts don't know who's hitting or pitching. The run expectancy is the same whether it's Pedro Florimon hitting or Mike Trout, the same whether it's David Price pitching or Trevor May. They are an average, a rough guide to the percentages.

As a general rule, I dislike the sac bunt when trailing by multiple runs. The Twins in this case needed a big inning, and they only had nine outs left. The counter-argument is: They're at home (play for the tie at home, for the win on the road), and if Santana gets the runners over, they need only one single from Dozier or Mauer to tie the game. And Terry Francona, the Cleveland manager, isn't likely to walk either intentionally, because that would put the go-ahead run on base.

So part of the question here is: How good do you really think Santana is?  Off his first 272 major league plate appearances, he's hall-of-fame quality, at least for a shortstop. Off his minor league career, not so much.

Wetmore takes Santana's numbers so far at face value. I suspect that, for once, Gardenhire has a more realistic view of what his skills are. The rookie's not really a .300-plus hitter. On the other hand, he's facing a truly LOOGY (Marc Rzepczynski) with the platoon advantage.

On the whole, I want to go for the big inning there, not play for the tie. But it's not an automatic decision either way, and it ought not be treated as such.

Bunting against the shift

Carlos Santana drops one down for a single Tuesday.

Top of the third inning, two outs, nobody on. Carlos Santana, the Cleveland cleanup hitter, steps up to the plate against the pronounced shift he typically sees when hitting left-handed and promptly pushes a bunt to the vacated third base position.

Easy base hit.

In the Twins TV booth, Bert Blyleven is critical of Santana for bunting. The old pitcher's analysis: With two outs, Santana should be looking for extra bases. A bunt single doesn't put him in scoring position for the next guy (Lonnie Chisenhall in this specific example). The unspoken next step of this line of thought -- unspoken, at least, by Blyleven -- is that the bunt is a selfish play, executed less to help the team than to fatten Santana's meager batting average. (Santana is having the kind of season at the plate only a stat nerd can love: He leads the American League in walks and he has 15 homers, but he entered Tuesday's game batting just .205. He left it hitting .214.)

Later in the game, I am listening to the radio guys, and the Santana bunt comes up. Dan Gladden is almost enthusiastic about the bunt. Santana got on base, he kept the line moving. An unspoken thought in defense of the bunt: Beyond doubt, part of Santana's meager batting average is the heavy use of infield shifts against him. Some bunt singles might discourage teams from shifting.

There's merit in both viewpoints. Blyleven's right in this: Santana's three other hits Tuesday (a home run and a pair of doubles) did more to help Cleveland score runs than the bunt did. On the other hand, had Santana lined a single to the outfield, nobody would criticize him for merely getting a one-base hit. Hitting is difficult.

Personally, I'm fine with the play. It's not the optimal time for Santana to take a bunt hit (leading off the inning would be), but he's got to do something to get the third baseman back on left side of the infield and open up the right side. And he's got hitters behind him who can do some damage. Getting on base -- not making an out -- is the goal of hitting.

Moving beyond this specific case to the abstract: There appears to be a brainless dispute within the game about when it's appropriate to bunt against a shift.

Earlier this year, the Houston Astros and Oakland Athletics got into a plunking war that was rooted in a bunt attempt by the A's Jed Lowrie with a 7-0 lead. The Astros responded by throwing at Lowrie.

This weekend, Colby Lewis, Texas pitcher, griped at Colby Rasmus, Toronto outfielder, for a bunt in essentially the same situation as Santana's bunt. (I can't resist; what's with these cheesy first names?)

My opinion: If it's appropriate for the defense to put on an exaggerated infield shift -- which are designed to take away singles; no infield shift is going to keep a home run ball in the park -- then it's appropriate for the batter to bunt against that shift.

The hitter is under no obligation to cooperate with the defense. Or the pitcher.

I suspect the pitchers unhappy with the opposition bunts are, in truth, unhappy with the shifts being deployed behind them. But they can't publicly vent about the manager giving away the bunt hit, so they direct their frustration at the guy taking what is given them. (Let it be noted that Lewis' ERA this year is 6.37, and Paul Clemens, the Astros pitcher who used Lowrie for target practice, has been up and down with an ERA of 6.08 in the majors. They can give up runs without their manager giving away the bunt.)

I know Tom Kelly thinks the shifts are overdone. But they are prevalent in today's game because they work. When enough hitters do what Santana did Tuesday often enough, the shifts will fade.



 

The Twins and the WBC

J.O. Berrios —
or is it Jose?

Today's print column was a general look at the World Baseball Classic, but it hardly exhausts the topic.

The Twins had 13 players — from former MVPs to teenagers — in the WBC. No organization provided more participants. Here's a few comments:

* How raw is J.O. Berrios? So raw there's no consensus on what he's to be called. The Star Tribune is going with Jose on first reference; Baseball America uses the initials; Baseball Reference at one point used the initials and now has gone with the first name. So far I've gone with the initials.

Berrios (and fellow Puerto Rican Eddie Rosario) was in the Twins major-league camp before the WBC only because of the event; both prospects took advantage of the opportunity to catch the attention, and imagination, of the big-leauge staff. 

Rosario got a lot of playing time in the early exhibitions, Berrios did not. But Berrios pitched Sunday in relief against the Dominican Republic in a game aired by ESPN. (The broadcast was in Spanish, which means I understood only occasional words of the commentary, such as beisbol; this was a vast improvement over the likes of Rick Sutcliffe and John Kruk.) 

Deolis Guerra pitches for
his homeland.

Berrios had a rough outing — two runs, both earned, in 1.2 innings, and he was charged with the loss — but it was still easy to be impressed. The kid (still only 18) blew a high fastball past Robinson Cano for strike three. He throws from a lower arm angle than I had expected to see, and the motion looks easy.

He needs, obviously, experience and good health. That's not an easy combination to achieve. But he can be a good one.  

* Deolis Guerra was pitching for Venezuela but left in mid-round with what was initially described as a pectoral injury. It turned out to be a blood clot in his shoulder. He's to have part of a rib removed to free up space.

This was a potentially serious development, but since it's been caught it's not a career-threatening one. There's no reason Guerra shouldn't be able to pitch again. Still, it's a blow; most of this season is lost for him.

It seems like we've been waiting for him forever; he was the high-ceiling piece of the Johan Santana trade, made just before spring training in 2008. He'll never be the stud starter envisioned at the time, but he's still only 23.

* It's easy to criticize the game strategy Team USA manager Joe Torre employed in the first round. 

Sam Deduno struck out five and walked
none in his start against Spain.

The Americans attempted four sacrifice bunts Sunday against Canada. Now, I love the bunting game, but I love it in its place. Torre has a lineup filled with legitimate All-Stars, and — no offense to the Team Canada pitchers — they're facing moundsmen of much lesser accomplishment. Giving away outs with guys like Adam Jones and Ben Zobrist is just silly.

But in another light, Torre is in a unique situation. He's got a roster of All-Stars, players who left their jobs to play for this team, and none of them came to park their butts on the bench. Torre made a point of getting everybody some playing time in the pool games. Ego massage comes with the territory, and perhaps all the bunting is a way of reminding them that the ego massage only goes so far. 

*Sam Deduno was a late addition to the Dominican roster, and when he opted to pitch in the WBC I saw some muttering from the metro media that he was hurting his chances of making the Twins rotation and wasn't likely to pitch for D.R. anyway.

He started the second game of pool play for the Dominican — four shutout innings against Spain for the win. Yeah, it was Spain, the weak sister of the San Juan pool (Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Venezuela and Spain), but Deduno did pitch. 

And, realistically, he wasn't making the Twins rotation out of camp even had he stayed. Do the math: There's Scott Diamond, Vance Worley, Mike Pelfrey and Kevin Correia, all of whom will either be in the rotation or on the DL. Then there's the contenders on the 40-man roster — Kyle Gibson, Cole DeVries, Liam Hendriks — all of whom rank ahead of Deduno. 

Bunting Josh Willingham

Bunting drills are a staple of the early days of spring training.

One of the fixtures of Twins spring training in recent years has been Rod Carew teaching bunting. There may be no man alive better qualified for the task.

The sight of slow-footed slugger Josh Willingham working his way into the bunting instructionals Monday morning set off a minor Twitter flurry from a couple of the beat writers.

This appeared to be completely Willingham's idea. Manager Ron Gardenhire, asked about Willingham bunting later, said he'll have Willingham bunt when he's trying to get fired, and as far as having him sacrifice, that's the mindset I'd want the manager to have.

The most recent of
Josh Willingham's
two career sac bunts
came in 2008, when
he played for the
Marlins.

So why was Willingham volunteering for bunting drills? One possibility that entered my noggin is that he has the notion of coaching (even if only on the youth level) after his playing days end, and that he recognizes that the bunt is an art he's not very familiar with — and why not learn something of it from a master?

A more immediate purpose might be the wish to make infielders play him honestly — or at least pay a price for taking exaggerated defensive positions.

The reports Monday said Willingham didn't look particularly good in his bunt attempts, but that, as Carew told him, "They're going to give it to you."

There are situations in which I wouldn't object to Willingham bunting for a hit. Down three runs late, a righty on the hill, and Willingham's leading off with left-handed sluggers like Justin Morneau, Ryan Doumit and Chris Parmelee behind him, why not? As long as Willingham's confident that he can get the bunt down and past the pitcher, it can get him on base to start the inning — and that, in turn, will force the infielders to play the following hitters more conventionally and open things up for them.

There's a big qualifier to that idea — that he has to be confident that he can execute the plan. It's not going to help if he fouls the bunt off or pops it up.

It's not unheard for a slow right-handed bopper like Willingham to have the bunt base hit in his arsenal. Steve Garvey, the first baseman of a legendary Dodger infield a generation ago, was no faster than Willingham, but he had a goal of getting a bunt hit each month. It was part of his formula for 200 hits a season, something he accomplished with regularity.

But I'll guarantee that Garvey worked at the bunt more than one brief session in the first week of spring training. If Willingham's serious about this, he'll need to work at it.

Not all situations are the same

Julio Borbon of the Texas Rangers not only squeezed home

the go-ahead run with this seventh-inning bunt

on Sunday, he reached first base safely.

Aaron Gleeman this morning linked to this tweet from Matt Klasssen of Fan Graphs, which claims that less than a third of bunt attempts increase the bunting team's Win Probability Added.

WPA is a situational stat. It attempts to measure how much a given act (a single, a stolen base, a double play) affects a team's chances of winning the game given the situation in which it occurred. Jim Thome's home run in the 12th inning Saturday ranked a lot higher in WPA than did his home run last Tuesday, when the Twins already had the lead.

And like many of the sophisticated sabermetric stats, WPA is essentially non-auditable, and I regard such stats with varying levels of suspicion.

Gleeman takes Klaassen's tweet to be another nail in the coffin of the sacrifice bunt. I don't — because every situation is different.

Man on first base, nobody out, tied game, ninth inning. WPA views this as the same situation whether the batter is Jim Thome or Jason Repko, whether the pitcher is Bobby Jenks or Matt Thornton, whether the third baseman is Omar Vizquel or Mark Teahen.

No, you don't bunt with Thome; that runner on first is already in scoring position. With Repko, it makes more sense — especially if the erratic Teahen is at third and the chunky Jenks is on the mound. And it makes a bit less sense if Vizquel is playing third and Repko has the platoon advantage against Thornton.

A lot of variables there — and we haven't even discussed weather conditions, home or road, length of grass ...

I've blogged about this specific paragraph from Bill James (in his 2010 Gold Mine book) before, but it remains relevant:

Sabermetricians are often critical of the bunt, arguing that the sac bunt, even when successful, reduces the number of runs the team can expect to score. But this misses a critical point: that the "Denard Span" bunt, where you're really bunting for a hit but you'll take the sacrifice as a by-product of failure, is a very good play. If there's a runner on first and nobody out ... you only have to bunt about .275 to make it a good play — assuming that you'll get the sac bunt even if the effort for a hit doesn't work. A good bunter can bunt much more than .275 —making it a good play.

(James was writing in the context of examining Span's bunting prowess in 2009, when he bunted 27 times for 12 sacrifices and 10 singles. That's a .370 "batting average" when bunting.)

Earl Weaver hated the bunt. Billy Southworth, another Hall of Fame manager — who managed a team Weaver followed as a kid — loved the bunt. Tom Kelly tended to avoid the bunt; Ron Gardenhire deploys it frequently.

This difference of opinion is well and good — and logical. They all managed in different times and places, with different players of various skills.  The illogic comes in envisioning the game as one-strategy-fits-all.

The beauty of the bunt

Last September I wrote a screed about the silliness that day of sac bunting on the road when behind.

For most of the winter, another blog's approving link to that post was one of the most prominent results when I Googled "baseball outsider." Even now, it's on the second page.

I find that ironic, because in the realm of Internet baseball writing, I'm about as bit a fan of the bunt as you're going to find. I just didn't like it that day, for very specific reasons, detailed in that post.

Wednesday, the Twins used the bunt in a way that I applaud, and in a way that was extremely profitable.

Bottom of the fifth, score tied. Nick Punto gets an infield single. Drew Butera bunts; Detroit pitcher Andrew Oliver throws high; Detroit's Carlos Guillen can't keep his foot on the bag (photo); Butera is safe on the error. Span bunts; this time the Tigers get the out, but Punto and Butera advance. Orlando Hudson plates Punto with a fly ball, Delmon Young drives in Butera with a single, Twins lead 3-1.

I like this sequence because:

• Butera (.178/.213/.267) is as weak a hitter as plays a position. Might as well trade his inevitable out for a base.
• Oliver is a rookie power pitcher. Power pitchers are generally not good fielders; bunting gives the kid more opportunity to screw up.
• Span's bunt came not with the Twins behind but with them tied. Play for the win on the road, for the tie at home. And the second point remained valid. Let's try to force Oliver to make a play. (It was the catcher who handled Span's bunt.)

This comes from this year's edition of the Bill James Gold Mine:

Denard Span bunted 27 times in 2009, the most bunts in play of any American League player. Twelve of those were sacrifice bunts. Of the other 15, 10 were singles — a .667 batting average on efforts to bunt for a hit, or .370 if you include the 12 sacrifices.

Sabermetricians are often critical of the bunt, arguing that the sac bunt, even when successful, reduces the number of times the team can expect to score. But this misses a critical point: that the "Denard Span" bunt, where you're really bunting for a hit but you'll take the sacrifice as a by-product of failure, is a very good play. If there's a runner on first and nobody out and you try to bunt for a hit, you only have to bunt about .275 to make it a good play — assuming that you'll get the sac bunt even if the effort for a hit doesn't work. A good bunter can bunt much more than .275 — making it a good play.

I go beyond James in applauding the bunt, because I believe there are a lot of pitchers and corner infielders — even in the major leagues — who are uncomfortable dealing with bunts. Butera didn't get a hit, but he reached on an error and scored a run as a result.

The agony (updated), the amusement and the bunts

The Twins are no longer in first place, but there are worse things than falling into second.

What happened in the eighth inning to Joel Zumaya, for example.

The Tigers reliever was diagnosed Tuesday with a fracture of the olecranon, the tip of the elbow. (I had no idea I had an olecranon, and I'll wager you didn't either.) He's out for the rest of the season.

He threw a 99-mph pitch to Delmon Young and collapsed in agony. The sight of his right hand convulsing was frightening to see. Bad as this is/was, it's probably better than the shredded elbow ligaments I expected.

Zumaya's string of significant injuries is one of my informal data points for the notion that some athletes are doing things that the human body simply cannot support. That he throws 100 mph consistently even after his shoulder has given way, even after his finger has given way, is remarkable. But he continues to go down with injuries.

Dick Bremer, during the postgame show, called Zumaya one of the game's top relief pitchers. That's overstating matters a bit. He's talented, to be sure. He's certainly one of the hardest-throwing hurlers. But he is out of action with injuries so often that he can't be rated above Matt Guerrier, for example, and Guerrier isn't making any All-Star teams.

I suspect that given the choice, the Tigers would rather have lost Monday's game and have a healthy Zumaya. They don't get that choice.

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From the painful-to-witness to the hopelessly hilarious: Jim Thome's triple. I'm pretty sure Alex Voigt ran faster in his marathon a couple of weekends ago than Thome did Monday.

It's not that Thome isn't trying. He simply is about as swift as an anvil.

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I've long been an advocate of bunting for hits on power pitchers, most of whom finish their delivery off balance and don't particularly like to run around. The Tigers laid down three bunts on Francisco Liriano without the Twins getting an out.

I can't even blame the right fielder-playing-third for any of them — all three were to the first-base side. These were on Liriano, Orlando Hudson and Justin Morneau. (And the Tigers deserve credit for some good bunts, too.)

New life in Quadruple A

A few added reasons to believe that the National League just isn't nearly as tough as the AL:

John Smoltz (left) with Boston (30 innings): 8.33 ERA

John Smoltz with St. Louis (22 innings): 3.27 ERA

Brad Penny with Boston (131 2/3 innings): 5.61 ERA

Brad Penny with San Francisco (15 innings): 1.20 ERA

Jose Contreras with Chicago AL (114 2/3 innings): 5.42 ERA

Jose Contreras with Colorado (9 2/3 innings): 1.86 ERA

OK, so there are sample size issues. Fact remains that all three veteran right-handers consistently stunk in the American League this year; two of them were flat out released; none has had a lousy outing since landing in Quadruple A — I mean, the National League.

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I wrote the previous entry before reading the LaVelle Neal III gamer for the Star Tribune. He too focused on the bunts. The wrong end of the bunts, the execution of them, not the dubiousness of the decision to sac bunt when behind.

The point is: Even if Span and Punto had moved their runners up, the bunts were bad percentage baseball.

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Check out the final entry in Craig Calcaterra's daily roundup of the baseball action: Probably worth noting that this west coast game ended before the eastern time Steelers-Titans game did. Even better, it didn't end with the losing team not having a chance to play offense. I'd list all the other reasons why it was superior to football, but I'm going on a trip next week and therefore won't have the time to get to them all.

Agreed.

The wrong times to bunt

Tragic number as of Friday morning: 18. Twins and Tigers both lost on Thursday.

Today's sermon is a response to this quote from the AP game story:

"You give up three runs, you should have an opportunity to win," manager Ron Gardenhire said. "Unfortunately for us, our offense never could get anything going."

Well, maybe — just maybe — that's because Gardenhire didn't give it a chance to get anything going.

Fifth inning. Toronto has a 2-1 lead. Nick Punto opens the inning with an eight-pitch at-bat that concludes with a double down the right field line. This brings up Denard Span, possessor of a .392 OPB, master of the drawn-out at-bat, who had homered in his previous at-bat (above). It's the perfect opportunity to build a big inning and wear down starter Brent Cecil.

Gardy has Span bunt the first pitch. He pops up. Orlando Cabrera singles Punto home anyway, but Joe Mauer and Justin Morneau do nothing, and the inning ends with no further damage.

Seventh inning. Twins are again behind by a run. Brendan Harris leads off with a walk. In defiance of the adage "play for the tie at home, play for the win on the road," Gardy has Punto bunt. It turns into a force out at second. The Twins don't score.

It isn't just that the Twins failed to execute the bunts, although that's certainly the case. It's that giving away outs when trailing on the road is a really bad idea.

It's especially bad when one of the guys who's giving away the outs is a hitter of Span's quality and the runner is already in scoring position.

It's marginally more justifiable with Punto, because he's not a quality hitter. But that's why you have pinch hitters. When Punto bunted, he was giving away one of the nine outs the Twins had left.

That's wasteful spending.

Bunto Punto, part II

Having ripped Nick Punto earlier this month for failing to get bunts down, it is only fair to take note of the beautiful squeeze bunt he laid down Sunday. (The photo above is of Brendan Harris scoring on Punto's bunt.)

That was the time and place to utilize the sac bunt.

Not in the third inning, when you're down a run, playing a team with the sluggers the Rangers have. Not when the top of the order's up with a man in scoring position.

Dick 'n' Bert were vocally unhappy that Denard Span didn't bunt Punto from second to third. I was unhappy that Gardy was ordering the bunt to start with. Build an inning. Don't throw away Span's at-bat (batting average .308) and leave the job to Alexi Casilla (batting average .197).

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I was also disappointed by ESPN and KEYC, neither of which aired highlights of the most memorable play of the game — Mike Redmond's triple. Yeah, it didn't matter — he neither scored nor drove in a run — but man, it was funny.

And lord only knows what Marlon Byrd was trying to accomplish with that slide while pursuing the ball.

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From Phil Rogers, Chicago Tribune: "It's not a done deal that (Rich) Harden is going to the Twins, although it seems certain he's not coming back to the Cubs." He believes the Twins should and will get Harden.

Bunto Punto

Or, why Nicky can't bunt ...

Thursday was the second time this week that Nick Punto flat out failed to get a sacrifice bunt down.

It's not like he's been terrible all season at it; he has eight "sacrifice hits" — that's the offical term for a sac bunt — on the season, tied for sixth most in the American League. (Also among the six hitters with eight sac bunts is Denard Span.)

Thursday's problems came in the sixth inning. Joe Crede walked on four pitches. Mike Redmond walked on five pitches, with a pitching change tossed in after the first two balls. Up come Punto — foul bunt, swinging foul, foul bunt for strike three.

Then Denard Span walked (on four pitches), leading the TV boys to absolve Punto's failure. (And then Orlando Cabrera fell behind 0-2, prompting Bert Blyeleven to proclaim that that doesn't matter — which, of course, it does; in at-bats that start 0-2, Cabrera this year is hitting .232 — and Cabrera bounded into a double play. But that's another rant.)

The other failure came Sunday, in the finale of the Tigers series. With the score tied in the eighth, Redmond led off with a single. Carlos Gomez pinch ran. Punto failed to get his bunt down and wound up flying out to right. Gomez advanced to second when the next batter (Jason Kubel) grounded out, but got no further.

So really, Punto's bunting problems this week didn't cost the team runs. But it cost the team opportunities to score.

And, let's face it — if you're a .200-hitting middle infielder with no power, you better get every bunt down.

News, notes and comment

Item: Jonathan Sanchez of the Giants no-hit the San Diego Padres on Friday.

Comment: Sanchez (right) is one of the good young power arms the Giants have accumulated over the past few years, but unlike Tim Lincecum or Matt Cain, he's never quite figured it out.

This game left him with 331 strikeouts in 328 2/3 career innings — and a career ERA of 5.07.

And let's face it: It was the Padres. Team batting average: .232. Sooner or later, somebody was going to no-hit them.

Item: Joe Mauer is going to compete in the Home Run Derby on Monday.

Comment: The National League has four first basemen with big power reps entered: Prince Fielder, Adrian Gonzalez, Ryan Howard and Albert Pujols — career total 805 home runs and three home run titles. The AL at this point has Mauer and Brandon Inge committed — 174 HRs total.

Advantage, NL.

We get this every so often — a great hitter without a home run rep entered in the Derby. (Mauer's the great hitter I'm talking about; Inge is something less.) Ichiro and Edgar Martinez come to mind. Generally they come in with their manager talking about the power show they put on in batting practice and leave having lived up to their real-life reputation.

Item: One of the Chicago beat writers was struck hours before game time Friday by the sight of eight Twins taking early bunting practice. Then the Twins used late-inning bunts to score the tie-breaking run in the seventh (Denard Span moving Nick Punto into scoring position in front of Mauer's single) and an insurance run in the eighth (Carlos Gomez with a two-out bunt single to drive in Matt Tolbert).

Comment: Kind of speaks for itself, doesn't it?

A (pointless) rant on the non bunts

10-2 is 10-2. You get beat by that score, there's no one thing to point to as the reason. You just got your clock cleaned.

And having made that concession to reality ...

Those who've read me over the years know that I am a big advocate of bunting on power pitchers. Most of them — almost all of them — hate fielding bunts. Their follow-throughs generally leave them off balance. They often throw poorly to the bases. Bob Gibson was a superb fielding pitcher; you'd have a hard time coming up with another power pitcher who was a Gold Glover.

CC Sabathia is not only a power pitcher, he's fat. He hates getting off the mound to field a bunt.

Add to that the current word on the post-operative Alex Rodriguez at third base — that word is "immobile" — and you have an obvious recipe for the Twins on Tuesday night. Bunt.

Build the lineup with that in mind. First two guys up, bunt. Maybe even the third (Joe Mauer is perhaps the best bunter on the team.) Make CC move his fat self. Get into his head. (Carlos Gomez last year, explaining why he bunted repeatedly against Justin Verlander of the Tigers: He is a great pitcher, but his mind is weak. Sabathia has been known to lose his composure when bunted on repeatedly.)

Make him move, make A-Rod move.

And to hear Bremer and Blyleven chatter on the tube coming into the game, the Twins had that in mind. The Twins want to bunt and run on Sabathia.

So what happened? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. If anybody even showed bunt, I missed it.

Of course, by the time Carlos Gomez came up, the Twins were down three runs and the bunt probably wasn't in order.

But Denard Span certainly could have tried to bunt for a hit in the first inning. While I'm not sure I've ever seen Brendan Harris try to bunt for a hit, it sure couldn't work any worse than what he's been doing lately at the plate. He is now 2-for-23 this month.

Yes, 10-2 is 10-2. They could have at least made Sabathia work a bit.