I’m already sick and tired of Baker. He’s a fucking windbag.
Absolutely. There was no reason for Toro not to be bunting in the 11th with runners on first and second, nobody out, and a run wins the game. The same was true of Kyle Tucker in the 12th. Altuve in the 10th is more debatable, but even if they walked Bregman to load the bases, you had Brantley up with the bases loaded and a sacrifice fly wins the game. I’ll take my chances with that any day.
This is one area where a reliance on analytics hurts the Astros. Analytics says bunting is bad and giving away at bats, so now the Astros don’t do it at all.
It wouldn’t have loaded the bases. There would have been a runner on 3B with one out and Bregman up. They’d have walked him to put runners on the corners, with a base open. Still, it would have been a significantly better situation than where you ended up with Toro not advancing the runner.
And this is where analytics makes me cringe. I have no problem with the theory that in some generic scenario over the course of a season you’re more likely to score multiple runs by not bunting, but it’s so situationally ignorant that it’s painful. You’re not trying to score 5 runs, you’re trying to score one run, in this inning of this game, with THESE hitters coming to the plate. Analytics has just completely taken situational baseball out of the equation and it makes my head hurt.
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Altuve led off the 10th, so you are right that the Astros would have had runners on 1st and 3rd with Brantley up if the Dodgers walked Bregman after Altuve moved the runner over. My mistake, and thanks for the correction. Still, like you, I’d definitely take my chances with Brantley getting a sac fly to win the game.
I was shocked neither Toro or Tucker were bunting when they came up with runners in scoring position and nobody out in a tie game.
Stark has an article on extra inning strategy (or how Ensberg calls it “half-court baseball”):
Basically nobody wants to bunt unless it’s the home team in a tie game and the bottom of the order is up.
Like that scenario would ever happen.
And even then, probably not.
I would have been fine with bunting over to third. Having said that, on the broadcast last night they said the percentages of a runner scoring from second base with no one out is 62%. If that percentage of scoring is higher than a runner scoring from third with one out, I guess I understand playing the numbers.
But how your team is swinging the bats still needs to be taken into account, and our hitters are in a big time funk. We probably would have a had a higher chance of scoring on a wild pitch than getting a hit from Springer, Altuve or Bregman.
Sadly, the players are actually paid for stats, not winning.
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