The Pittsburgh Pirates and Bunting

The Pittsburgh Pirates lost their 6th straight game tonight, and have fallen quite a ways since being in first place in the National League Central. In the 9th inning, the Pirates used an all too familiar tactic to try and tie the game up.

The newly acquired Derrek Lee led the inning off by reaching base after being hit by a 3-2 pitch. That brought the other trade deadline acquisition, Ryan Ludwick to the plate. Manager Clint Hurdle did exactly what we were all hoping he wouldn't, and signaled Ludwick to lay down a sacrifice bunt, which he did. That brought up the struggling Pedro Alvarez, who had 2 hits earlier in the game.

Now stop there for a minute. Let me throw some numbers out at you. According to an in depth study of the 2005 Major League Baseball season by Baseball Prospectus, the chance of scoring a run with a man on first base and nobody out is 41.7%. The chance of scoring a run with a man on 2nd base and one out is 41.0%. So by bunting the runner over, you automatically lessen your chance of scoring by 0.7%. Sure, that study was taken from one season of baseball, and those numbers might not be the same for every season. However, it is pretty certain that the first percentage I gave you will always be higher than the second one, it's just a matter of by how much.

The lineup is also a major consideration here. By bunting Ludwick to get Alvarez to the plate (who would be followed by Ryan Doumit), and knowing that there is a better chance of scoring by letting Ludwick swing away (with average batters everywhere), Hurdle seems to be saying that he had more confidence in Alvarez getting a hit than Ludwick. Is this logical? That's very arguable. As I said, Alvarez was 2/3 in the game and Ludwick was 0/3. Neither batter has had success at the plate in terms of getting hits this year, as Ludwick sports a .233 average to Alvarez's .211 average. Ludwick had not registered a hit in his first 10 at bats with the Pirates, and Alvarez had 5 hits in his last 11 at bats, so it's easy to say he had the hotter bat. The other argument is that there was a right handed pitcher on the mound, so you would rather have the left handed Alvarez facing him. That said, you really have no reason to be confident in either of these guys' bats to get a hit, so in my opinion, you should just play the percentages in this situation.

For whatever reason, Hurdle had Ludwick bunt and gave up another out. Two strikeouts later, the ballgame was over and the Pirates were below .500 again.

There will always be 2 sides of this argument, but the raw numbers say that Hurdle made the wrong decision, and it's beginning to get ridiculous how many of these bunts do the Pirates absolutely no good.