Bunting is having a real moment in Major League Baseball this year, and I hate that I have to admit some of it is actually working. As a lifelong Royals fan, I’ve spent years watching a perfectly good rally get strangled because someone in the dugout decided a free out was a good trade. So forgive me if I don’t immediately trust a trend that sounds, on the surface, like a defense of my team’s favorite bad habit.
Here’s the case for the defense, and it’s a real one. Sacrifice bunt rates are the highest they’ve been since 2021, bunt-hit rates are the highest since 2015, and FanGraphs found bunts are generating 6.0 runs above average per 100 attempts this season, actually beating the value of an average batted ball. Teams like Tampa Bay and Milwaukee are leading the league in bunt attempts and winning with it. That’s a real number, not a vibe.
But look closer at where the value is coming from, and the story gets a lot more interesting. Teams aren’t just bunting more. They’re bunting smarter. Fewer sacrifices with a runner on first for a free out, way more with a runner on third, and more bunt-for-hits from burners who can actually beat the throw. In other words, the teams making bunting pay off are doing exactly the thing I already believe in: using it as a scalpel in a specific, late-game, high-stakes spot, not as a default setting.
That’s the distinction the Royals keep missing. Kansas City sits eighth in baseball in sacrifice bunts this year, comfortably in the top third of the league, and it’s not because Kansas City has a roster full of burners squeezing in runs from third with one out. It’s an organization that still treats an out like it’s a renewable resource. Twenty years after Moneyball, somebody in that dugout is still nodding along to “it’s a process” as an actual strategy instead of the punchline it was always supposed to be.
@handsomeshrekk #moneyball one of the best baseball movies!!! In my opinion.
That’s the part people miss about Moneyball, honestly. The movie was never anti-bunt. It was anti-stupid. Billy Beane didn’t ban bunting because bunting is inherently bad, he was furious that his organization kept giving away outs out of habit instead of doing the math on what an out was actually worth in that exact moment. Twenty-plus years of run expectancy data later, this year’s numbers prove him right in the most annoying way possible: the strategy works great when you’re selective about it, and it’s still a rally killer when you’re not.
So no, I’m not walking back the take. A sacrifice bunt with a runner on first in the third inning of a game you’re trying to win is still just handing the other team an out for free, no matter how good the league-wide bunt numbers look in a spreadsheet. A squeeze play with a burner on third and one out in a one-run game late is a different sport entirely. The problem was never the bunt. It’s calling for one on autopilot instead of doing the process the movie was actually making fun of you for skipping.
My two cents: bunting isn’t dumb, bunting without a reason is. The Royals should try the reason sometime.