My Three Biggest "Times Square Momements" with Joe Girardi: Sacrifice Bunting

I like Joe Girardi as a manager. For the most part he seems to have a good handle on his team, doesn't misuse any one player, and does not try to do anything too extreme as a manager. He understands the game and he understands the perspective of an entire season over sacrificing one game--no matter who they are playing. But he certainly has his "Times Square" moments. I have given it this name after my evening commute which takes me through Times Square, an annoying, confusing, illogical and all-together frustrating experience that leaves me throwing my hands up. (Yes, please, family from out-of-town, let's all fan out, hold hands, and then decided to stop and turn around without any warning to take a picture. That sounds like a wonderful idea that's not going to bother anyone else on the street.) I'm going to start on a series of my three biggest Times Square moments with Joe Girardi with today's entry: Sacrifice Bunting

Joe Girardi needs to add a note to his binder: DON'T BUNT (NYT)

If you are warm and have a fireplace in your place of dwelling, you have two options, you can either take your cash to store and buy some firewood or you can burn that money. Sure, burning that money will keep you warm since it is flamable and it's really easy since you don't have to go outside in the cold to get it but it's a really inefficient and it's a lazy way about going about things.

Truthfully, no one would actually burn money instead of going to the store for the firewood, but in many senses, the amount of sacrifice bunting that some American League teams do is on that level. It's inefficient and it's frankly lazy managing. Basketball, Hockey, Soccer, Football, and many other sports have a clock; baseball has no finite time-frame, only a finite number of outs. They need to be protected like unobtanium in Avatar and yet they really are sometimes given away. I'm not saying that one should never bunt (more on this later), but some of the great hitters who are given the sign to lay down the sacrifice make me scratch my head.

The Yankees have this great hitter in Curtis Granderson having perhaps his greatest year (after a remarkable transformation) and he already has 2 sacrifice bunts on the season. If he finishes the season with an OPS+ of at least 150, he will be only the 6th qualified hitter in the past 15 years to have an OPS+ that high and have at least 2 sac bunts, according to Baseball-Reference. Adrian Gonzalez is on that list from last year (no wonder he wasn't disappointed to be out of San Diego) as is Derek Jeter from 1999 (in his greatest hitting season) and Roberto Alomar with the 2001 Indians (who had 9 in probably his greatest season). The theme between those 4 hitters is that they shouldn't have been bunting in a sacrificial manner that year under any circumstances. For the 1999 Yankees, 2001 Indians or 2011 Yankees, almost no batter in that lineup should have laid down a sac bunt.

And yet twice this season the Yankees have asked the Grandy Man to square around in close games and try to move the runner over. On April 26th, with Derek Jeter on first base, Granderson bunted against the White Sox Matt Thornton down 3-2 in the bottom of the 9th (the Yankees lost 3-2). On May 22nd, in the midst of a rally in the bottom of the seventh, with the score tied 3-3 against the Mets and runners on 1st and 2nd, Granderson was against asked to bunt against the immortal Tim Byrdak. It's not that Granderson couldn't put a bunt down and beat it out (he certainly has the speed), but with his speed, why not let him swing away in those situations?

Joe Girardi is permanently attached to his famous binder but would it kill him to use one page on the Run Expectancy Matrix from The Book which shows how that really, really won't help lead to more runs (even if you squint really hard). Sure there are "good bunts" but most of those (like these top bunts from 2010) either were aiming for a base hit or were only successful because someone else screwed up. It's more likely that the defense will make a good play and actually get that lead runner or that your decreased chances of scoring will come back to bite you as a manager. Small ball (and that includes cheering for a guy who purposefully hits a ground ball to the second baseman with a runner on second and less than two outs) isn't the best strategy, especially when your team plays in the high-powered American League East.

Which is why I need to bring up that the truth is that there are times you should bunt, or, rather, that bunting is permissible. The Yankees just got done with a leg of National League parts and it brought to mind that pitchers probably should be bunting. ESPNLosAngeles' Tony Jackson later wrote in an article in which he called the sacrifice bunt the "most counterproductive strategic ploy in the game":

There are times when the only appropriate play is a sacrifice bunt. Those times are when a pitcher is at the plate, there is a runner on base with an open base in front of him, and there are less than two outs. That's it. In my less-than-humble, easily shared opinion, those are the only times when it isn't akin to shooting yourself in the foot, when it isn't presenting your opponents with a gift-wrapped out that gets them closer to escaping the jam.

The truth, too is that non-pitcher sac bunts are becoming much less prevalent in the game and the Yankees are following that path. The Book looks at sac bunts and realizing the dying art (5.5 per 500 PA in the 1940s to 4 in the 1980s to a little over 3 in 2004) is inversely tied to the rise of successful, sabermetrically-inclined teams. And Joe Girardi isn't a big bunting manager. In 2008--Girardi's first season as manager and also his most bunt-happy--the Yankees "only" sac bunted 31 times which was 8th most in the American League. But the least bunts that year in the American League came from the Tampa Bay Rays, who, not incidentally, went on to win the American League Pennant.

In 2009 the Yankees had 31 sac bunts again but won the World Series. In the American League Championship Series against the Angels, Joe Girardi called for two consecutive sacrifice bunts and Mitchel Lichtman of FanGraphs went into a long look about if those sac bunts (or any sac bunts) are actually correct. He brings up a lot of interesting points about Game Theory and about trying to be unpredictable but one of the times that he says that bunting is seemingly allowed is if the batter is so bad that the expected result of them swinging away is worse than them actually bunting. The name on the Yankees that Lichtman brings up is Jose Molina which is not only true, but interesting because in that April 26th game this season in which Granderson was asked to bunt they had another Molina in their lineup (Gustavo) who you could probably say the same thing about. But not Granderson.

So why does Girardi do it? In my opinion it's the same reason that the person who wanted to heat themselves didn't run out of the house for the firewood--laziness. I'm not saying that Girardi is lazy by any means but it is really easy and safe to just ask Granderson to bunt (I've used Granderson's name throughout this post but it really applies to all of the Yankees regulars). You are not putting Granderson in a position where you're asking him to get a base hit and then you're only asking one of the next two hitters to just get a single. It takes responsibility away from the players and if it doesn't succeed, well, you went with conventional wisdom.

The problem is that "conventional wisdom" doesn't apply to baseball in 2011. Teams are given a wealth of information and although you can't live and die by those numbers, you expect a better understanding of things like sacrifice bunting from a guy like Girardi who is a smart guy and sold the Yankees fanbase on the fact that he understood advanced metrics. I agree with the New York Times' Ben Shpigel who wrote after the Yankees lost the ALCS last season: sometimes Girardi's instincts and numbers don't add up. And there's nothing advanced about sac bunting and Girardi too often predictably reverts to it in big situations. And it's become one of my biggest Times Square moments with Joe Girardi.