The Dodgers Mastered the Bunt and Nobody Cared | Baseball Bits

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The Dodgers. The Sacrifice Bunt. 2019. That's what this episode of Baseball Bits is about. MLB Bunting is in decline, and has been for about a decade. But the 2019 Dodgers with a trio of Clayton Kershaw, Hyun Jin Ryu, and Kenta Maeda were prolific at the sac bunt. Why bunt? Why no bunts? These are the questions that will be answered in this episode. With the help the of Run Expectancy Matrix, we'll see why it makes sense to sacrifice bunt with pitchers hitting, but not with position players hitting. We'll talk about the Universal Designated Hitter and whether it would end the practice of bunting entirely. Spoiler alert: you may still see bunts even with the Universal DH.

Another topic I'll tackle is bunt singles. Bunting for a hit still seems to be viable, although you need the right skillset to make it happen. Finally, we'll wrap things up by exploring the strategy of the MLB extra innings rules. These rules are not traditional, but they do make it viable to bunt in extra innings. Anyways, I hope you all enjoy this Foolish Baseball production

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Babe Ruth bunting: https://baseballpastandpresent.com/mlb/homers-babe-ruth-lose-bunting-1927/
FanGraphs Run Expectancy Matrix: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/fangraphs-prep-is-context-king/
Tom Tango Run Expectancy Matrices: http://www.tangotiger.net/re24.html

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