Exactly. That was the first part of the James analysis. The second part was to find that real teams actually scored higher in the first inning than average and lower than average in Inning 2. (As expected). But he found that the combined average of 1+2 was less than the average of 4-6! In other words, when managers had some control over the order (the first two innings), they did worse than what might have been expected by random chance. Which led him to ask the question “why”, and to answer it well . . .
Coleman’s three sac fly game was in 1986. He did it on May 1 against San Diego. It had only been done four times prior to that. San Diego won 4-3.
Two days later, Don Mattingly had three sac flies in a game against Texas. However, the Yankees won that game 9-4.
The Yankees also had three sacrifice flies in an inning TWICE last year. It had only happened once before last season.
The sacrifice fly lends itself to such trivia because it is a relatively useless stat.
As to “one-run” small ball strategies I recommend everybody read “Weaver on Strategy”, written in the early 1980’s by Earl Weaver with Terry Pluto. Weaver said things like “If you play for one run, that’s all you get” and “You only get 27 outs in a game so don’t give any of them away.”
Hmmm. I think you’re going a little bit too far in this analysis. You’re essentially saying that in order to be credited with a sacrifice fly, the batter has to try to get out. Not so.
To see why this is false, apply the same logic to the sacrifice bunt. Does the batter bunt with the intention of getting out? No way, although an out often occurs. It is possible to get a hit with a bunt, just as it is possible to get a hit when attempting a sacrifice fly.
I don’t think you can ever apply the same logic to both of them. It is far too great an understatement to suggest that sac bunters are not trying to make an out, that “although an out often occurs”. My WAG is that 80-90% of sac bunts occur in obvious sacrifice situations, with the infield playing in, where the batter knows that there is probably only a 1-5% chance of getting a hit. It may be lower – I honestly can’t recall the last time that someone laid down a bunt with the infield expecting it that wasn’t quickly and easily fielded. At that point it can’t be a hit – it could be a FC, it could be a sac bunt, it could be an error – but it’s never a hit (with a fair scorer).
Bear in mind that a sac bunt is defined as a sucessful bunt – if, for instance, you bunt and the lead runner is thrown out, the play is called a fielder’s choice, and you get no more credit on your stat line than if you had popped up to the pitcher.
In short, there are a lot of reasons to suggest that the “sac bunt” stat is a true measure of success, whereas the “sac fly” stat is mostly a product of being lucky enough to fail in the right situation.
(This is, of course, bypassing the issue of whether the manager made the right move by calling for the bunt in the first place . . .)
RM Mentock said:
Maybe, but only a little bit.
There are two points I’m trying to make here and I’ll address them in turn.
Point the First:
There are major differences in the skill involved in successfully executing an SH and an SF that logically require we treat the two events differently.
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The SH-er has only two chances to succeed while the SF-er has at least three and often more. With a two strike count the SH-er is out on a foul but the SF-er keeps whacking.
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Assuming he hits the ball fair the SH-er is still constrained as to where the ball goes. He can’t hit it
in the air without defeating his purpose. If he hits it too hard he increases the chance of the defense forcing the lead runner. He can’t just dump the ball in front of home either, especially if Johnson or Rodriguez is behind the plate.
The SH-er just needs to hit a fly ball ‘deep enough’. His hit doesn’t even have to be in fair territory.
- You can defend against a SH. Teams have their corner infielders play in. They charge on the pitch. Teams can pitch-out to try to catch the baserunner napping.
Short of having a pitcher nobody can hit, Pedro or Randy when he’s right, there’s no defense against a SF. The batter either hits the ball to the OF on the fly or he doesn’t. His fly is either deep enough or it’s not. I grant you on rare occasions the OF can play in hoping for a play at the plate.
In short the successful SH-er must ‘catch’ the ball on the bat, position the hit ball so that no play can be made on the baserunner, and do so with a 2 strike constraint. To me that success results from skill, even more so since, in the NL at least, the man at bat is frequently the least skilled at other facets of batting. The successful SF-er merely has to hit the ball in the air a sufficient distance. While it certainly takes skill to hit professional pitching (and college, high-school and Little League pitching for that matter), I believe SFs result mostly from failed attempts to hit safely rather than from a particular ability to hit deep fly balls at will.
Point the Second:
Even granting a SF requires specific skill to execute, the current rules governing them are illogical. Take the example I gave in an earlier post. Man on second, no outs. Each of the next two hitters sends a fly ball to the wall, and each time the baserunner advances a base. Both hitters have done the same thing but we call the first play an out and the second play a SF. A single is always a single and a HR a HR but sometimes a fly ball out is an at bat and sometimes it’s not. That’s inconsistent, illogical and it offends me.
For those who are left here’s a summary of the changes in the SF rule, from Jim Meier’s column in the 26Apr99 The Sporting News:
**In 1908, the sacrifice fly was introduced, crediting the
batter with a sacrifice fly only if a runner scores after
the ball is caught. The following year, a provision was
added to allow the scorer to award a sacrifice fly even
if the ball is dropped for an error if the scorer believes
that the runner would have scored. Beginning in 1926,
the batter was credited with a sacrifice fly if “any
runner advances after the catch.” In 1931, the
“awarding of sacrifice flies is abolished.” For one
season in 1939, the sac fly returns, but is eliminated
again in 1940.
The sacrifice rule returns for good in 1954. “Also score
a sacrifice if, with less than two out, the batter hits a
fair fly ball which is caught, and a runner scores after
the catch, or is dropped for an error, and a runner
scores, if in the scorer’s judgment, the runner could
have scored after the catch had the fly been caught.”
In 1975, the rule was altered to include foul fly balls as
well. **
I say do away with the SF as a bad idea. But if we’re going to keep it, let’s go back to the rule of 1926-30.
I seem to have gone on at length. Next week we’ll discuss why ballpark organs (the musical kind) should be padlocked immediately after the national anthem is played.
Rare occasions? You mean, when a sacrifice fly is about to be hit?
Rare occasions? You mean, when a sacrifice fly is about to be hit? **
[/QUOTE]
Once again, the manager who acts like this is so obsessed with creating (or, in this case, preventing) a particular result that he loses sight of the big picture. Unless your outfielder is Willie Mays and your hitter is unable to hit the ball more than 350 feet with the wind blowing out, the only time it makes sense to play in is with zero or one out in the bottom of the ninth (or later) with a tie game and the winning run on third. Otherwise, your slightly increased chance of being able to throw out the runner on the attempted sacrifice fly is more than offset by the chance that the outfielder is going to be picking up the ball on the ground at the base of the wall as the batter chugs into second or third.
As always, there’s no free lunch. If you play for (or defend against) the SF, you are missing (or opening yourself up to) other, better lines of attack.
So, you are arguing that SF should only be credited in those circumstances?
I don’t have any real strong feelings on “what to do” with it. I just view it as something that is “there”. I don’t put much stock in BA (as opposed to OBA, SLG or OPS) anyway, so the fact that a few guys might get an extra few points of batting average in a lucky year with a bunch of SFs doesn’t get me worked up either way.
What about reaching on base by an error? They mostly count as an AB against the batter, despite the fact that he got on base. A batter “Hot Potato” Jones could be batting .100 for the season, but score 150 runs because he reaches base on error about twice a game. Now I know that this is very unlikely, but it is possible.
Same answer as the SF.
I have not studied it and so it is possible that there is some serious correlation between being a good hitter and:
a) Hitting SFs and
b) Reaching on Error, since in both cases it’s more likely to occur if you smoke the ball than to if you hit a 250-foot fly to dead center.
But I would suspect that reaching on an error is, like the SF, mostly just random. I have never heard of a player that was “good at it” and I would certainly dispute anyone who claimed that this was something that they could cause to occur.
I’ve heard some people claim that fast players, especially base stealing threats, “scare” the defense and cause more errors, but I’ve never seen any objective data on this. I doubt there is anyway to find out how many people are safe on errors anyway.
It’s likely to be someone who hits lots of ground balls at a stadium which has a poorly maintained infield.
Agreed. Though to be fair, in times where runs scored per game were lower (1968, dead ball era), this strategy made marginally more sense.
Earl Weaver was, indeed no fan of the “little ball strategy”. I heard that he was once asked why he didn’t bunt in a particular situation and he told the reporter who asked the question, “You can take the sacrifice bunt and shove it up your ass!” :eek:
According to Bill James, Dick Howser (who won the World Series with the Royals) was another manager who was known for his unwillingness to bunt. After Howser got into an altercation with a police officer, some wag wrote to a Kansas City sports section: “I don’t know if Howser hit that cop, but I’ll bet he didn’t bunt him over.” 
Interestingly, I personally did not play little league, and learned much of what I know about baseball strategy by playing table top simulation games (Statis Pro Baseball to be exact). It was amusing when I’d play said table top games against my (then) more experienced and sophisticated baseball fan friends, because they’d complain that the “relatively slow guy who wasn’t so good at making contact but who got on base a lot” had no business batting second for me.
Heh, years later, they do the same thing!