Why Girardi Made a Bad Decision Last Night

The Yankees almost came back last night after a bad start by Joba and a bad relief appearance from Chad Gaudin (I believe another bad move Girardi made last night, but not as bad). The bottom of the 9^th started with the Yankees down 10-5. Johnny Damon singled off of Rangers’ reliever Jason Grilli, then Mark Teixeira walked. In came Texas closer, Frank Francisco out of the bullpen to close it out. But he was shaky. He walked A-Rod to load the bases. Hideki Matsui followed with a single to score Damon and Jorge Posada reached on an infield single to score Teixeira. Then Robby Cano (don’t you know?!) singled to left, scoring two, and putting pinch runner Jerry Hairston Jr. on second. 10-9, no one out, tying run on second, winning run on first for Nick Swisher with Melky Cabrera on deck. Francisco can’t get anyone out and the Yankees are rallying.

Nick Swisher is, for all intents and purposes, a power hitter. He is not a bunter. Before this year, he had laid down 4 sacrifice bunts in 2512 plate appearances, spanning 611 games. This year, for some reason, Joe Girardi had asked Nick Swisher to bunt three times. And he decided last night to try to make it a fourth.

Now let me lay out the layman’s logic here: If Nick Swisher bunts successfully, you have runners on 2^nd and 3^rd and only one out, a flyball tying the game and a base hit possibly winning it. If Swisher is allowed to swing away, he can hit into a double play and the Yankees would be down to their final out. Even if he strikes out, that means that he didn’t move up the runners and there’s one out.

That, my friends, is not sound logic.

Nick Swisher has 196 plate appearances this year with runners on base. In those situations, he has splits of .252/.415/.448. That means he gets on base 41.5% of the time. He’s more than half as likely to strike out (20.4% of the time) than get on base.

This season he’s grounded into 9 double plays, which is roughly 4.5% of the time. So with runners on base, he’s about 10 times more likely to get on base than ground into a double play. Ok, I understand that does account for walks. So let’s throw those out. His batting average on balls in play (BAbip) with men on base is .291. That means, when he puts the ball in play with runners on base, he’s about 6.5 times more likely to get a base hit than ground into a double play and has 51 RBIs with men on base. Not only that, he’s 66% more likely to hit an extra base hit than hit into a double play. An extra base hit in that situation wins the game.
And how about Melky with the proposed best-case scenario of bunting the runners over to 2^nd and 3^rd? He has one RBI this year in that situation. And with his struggles as of late that I documented earlier, he would not be the guy you would want to bunt to get up there.

So what happened? Nick Swisher popped up the bunt and Melky Cabrera hit into a double play to end it.

Jack Curry reviews this situation for the New York Times. LoHud has more details on that costly failure. River Ave Blues has some more details about the bunt that drove us all crazy. Subway Squawkers says that it was a rotten way to end the game. Fack Youk writes a little Fuck You letter to Joe Girardi. Scott Proctor’s Arm says this is why he hates the bunt.

The key to baseball is not to give up outs on either side of the baseball. That includes bunting and squashing rallies by making unnecessary outs. But yet Joe Girardi decided it was a good idea to give up an out last night and it cost his team the game. He’s not the only manager who would choose to do this, but that does not make it the right move. Let’s just hope he doesn’t do the same in October.