Wild Card Game: Baltimore (Tillman) @ Toronto (Stroman) | Tuesday, October 4 | 8PM EST

[C Court]

Any updates from Pickles Pub?

[Boogie!]

you dont have to lay down a perfect bunt to get the runner to third in this situation... the point is you need 1 run to win... it doesnt matter who it is... you lay down the bunt and advance that runner... why let him swing away and take a chance at striking out or grounding into a double play and wasting outs... that has to be a bunt no matter what and i have no idea why they **** that up... that play couldve come back to bite them in the ass... even if martin hits that ground ball next at bat, theres a chance that run scores from 3rd... that shouldve been a bunt. im not overly critical of managerial decisions in general, especially because i think baseball is one of those games thats largely based on players performing... but the fact that they ddint call for a bunt in that situation perplexes me... sometimes you gotta play small...

You need to lay down a very good bunt. That's not an easy task when you don't bunt and are facing a guy with a tricky delivery, with a hobbled runner on second. I'd lay the odds of him successfully advancing both runners well below 50/50.

what are the odds of him actually getting a base hit? or striking out? or grounding into a double play?

no, i dont care. i dont care if hes the **** bunter on the team. that has to be a bunt. you take that chance and if he **** up, he **** up. he also could **** up striking out, which he did, or he could **** up grounding into the double play. he could **** up many ways... laying down a bunt to advance a runner to third with no out to me is the safest bet. asking bautista to bunt isnt the same as asking ryan goins to hit a home run. its not as "tricky" a situation as people make it seem... were not asking him to bunt for a base hit here... were simply asking him to put some wood on the ball.

if theyre down a run, i wouldnt bunt. if theres one out, im obviously not bunting. if its first and third, im not bunting... but a runner on second with no out, bottom of the inning youre the home team and you only need one run to win? that has to be a bunt 10 times out of 10.

[Scott Hall]

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[Schad]

what are the odds of him actually getting a base hit? or striking out? or grounding into a double play?

no, i dont care. i dont care if hes the **** bunter on the team. that has to be a bunt. you take that chance and if he **** up, he **** up. he also could **** up striking out, which he did, or he could **** up grounding into the double play. he could **** up many ways... laying down a bunt to advance a runner to third with no out to me is the safest bet. asking bautista to bunt isnt the same as asking ryan goins to hit a home run. its not as "tricky" a situation as people make it seem... were not asking him to bunt for a base hit here... were simply asking him to put some wood on the ball.

No, it's seriously tricky. Here's a good primer:

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/the-truth-about-bunting/

I collected data from between 2008-2013. I classified things simply: a good bunt is a fair ball in play, and a bad bunt is a foul bunt or a missed bunt. Of course, not all fair bunts are good bunts. Of course, this misses out on bunts that were pulled back at the last second. This tracks only bunts that were committed to. Over the six years, there’s a sample of more than 36,000.

The breakdown:

Overall: 49.7% fair bunts
Pitchers: 49.9%
Non-Pitchers: 49.6%
The sample for pitchers is about 10,000. The sample for non-pitchers is about 26,000. There’s basically no difference. About half the time they’ve committed to a bunt, they’ve bunted the ball in play. That means that, half the time, they’ve messed up.

I decided to look at individual players, and compare guys who bunt often against guys who bunt infrequently. I set the following thresholds:

Frequent bunters: bunt attempts on 2.5% or more of all pitches
Infrequent bunters: bunt attempts on 0.5% or less of all pitches
The frequent bunters bunted the ball fair 49.5% of the time. The infrequent bunters bunted the ball fair 46.1% of the time. I should note before I forget that I excluded pitchers from this. There’s a clear advantage to bunting more often, in terms of bunt success, but it’s also pretty small, and even the upper-tier bunters, as a group, bunt poorly a lot.

Even frequent bunters will foul the ball off half the time. So the odds of Jose accomplishing nothing more than getting an 0-2 count are greater than 25% to begin with, to say nothing of his chances of actually laying down a good sacrifice. And advancing the runners doesn't actually increase the odds of scoring a run all that much, if accomplished: per Tom Tango's run expectancy matrix, the odds of scoring in an inning are 61% with runners at 1st and 2nd with none out, and 67.6% with runners at 2nd and 3rd with one out.

So, you're relying on a player who happens to be one of our best hitters, who doesn't bunt, and who has slow runners on the basepaths to execute a genuinely difficult skill in order to do something that, if successful, will increase our chances of scoring by....6.1%.

[Boogie!]

what are the odds of him actually getting a base hit? or striking out? or grounding into a double play?

no, i dont care. i dont care if hes the **** bunter on the team. that has to be a bunt. you take that chance and if he **** up, he **** up. he also could **** up striking out, which he did, or he could **** up grounding into the double play. he could **** up many ways... laying down a bunt to advance a runner to third with no out to me is the safest bet. asking bautista to bunt isnt the same as asking ryan goins to hit a home run. its not as "tricky" a situation as people make it seem... were not asking him to bunt for a base hit here... were simply asking him to put some wood on the ball.

No, it's seriously tricky. Here's a good primer:

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/the-truth-about-bunting/

I collected data from between 2008-2013. I classified things simply: a good bunt is a fair ball in play, and a bad bunt is a foul bunt or a missed bunt. Of course, not all fair bunts are good bunts. Of course, this misses out on bunts that were pulled back at the last second. This tracks only bunts that were committed to. Over the six years, there’s a sample of more than 36,000.

The breakdown:

Overall: 49.7% fair bunts
Pitchers: 49.9%
Non-Pitchers: 49.6%
The sample for pitchers is about 10,000. The sample for non-pitchers is about 26,000. There’s basically no difference. About half the time they’ve committed to a bunt, they’ve bunted the ball in play. That means that, half the time, they’ve messed up.

I decided to look at individual players, and compare guys who bunt often against guys who bunt infrequently. I set the following thresholds:

Frequent bunters: bunt attempts on 2.5% or more of all pitches
Infrequent bunters: bunt attempts on 0.5% or less of all pitches
The frequent bunters bunted the ball fair 49.5% of the time. The infrequent bunters bunted the ball fair 46.1% of the time. I should note before I forget that I excluded pitchers from this. There’s a clear advantage to bunting more often, in terms of bunt success, but it’s also pretty small, and even the upper-tier bunters, as a group, bunt poorly a lot.

Even frequent bunters will foul the ball off half the time. So the odds of Jose accomplishing nothing more than getting an 0-2 count are greater than 25% to begin with. And advancing the runners doesn't actually increase the odds of scoring a run all that much, if accomplished: per Tom Tango's run expectancy matrix, the odds of scoring in an inning are 61% with runners at 1st and 2nd with none out, and 67.6% with runners at 2nd and 3rd with one out.

So, you're relying on a player who happens to be one of our best hitters, who doesn't bunt, and who has slow runners on the basepaths to execute a genuinely difficult skill in order to do something that, if successful, will increase our chances of scoring by....6.1%.

so you pulled out all these numbers to prove how tricky it is to bunt in this situation...

then you say bautista is one of our best hitters but thats irrelevant because if youre gonna use situational metrics to prove how tricky it is to bunt, then what are the chances of bautista getting a base hit in that situation? what are the chances he strikes out? what are the chances he grounds into a double play? what are the chances we score no runs in that inning? those numbers also have to be brought to light.

still, those numbers dont matter when it comes time to play... you think john gibbons has that stat sheet out there and those numbers are the reason he didnt ask jose to bunt? he looked at those stats, calculated his odds of successfully completing the bunt and successfully scoring the run and deemed that it wasnt worth it? no... thats not what happened here.

at the end of the day, you concluded by saying it will INCREASE our chances of scoring by 6.1%... six percent is a very small number... but if youre going strictly by numbers, then technically it is the safer play if it increases the odds of scoring... and my logic behind suggesting a bunt should be made didnt even take any of those numbers into consideration... but strictly from a baseball standpoint, as in what is the best way to advance the runners and put yourself in a position to score that winning run? thats gotta be a bunt. i honestly dont care how you wanna slice it, but im pretty sure the only reason gibbons didnt ask jose to bunt there was because he trusted in his gut that he would come through with a hit and would rather take that chance than playing small... if we had lost this game, i guarantee that not bunting in that situation would be a huge topic of discussion right now.

stroman also came through clutch with a good game despite a lot of people thinking he would get destroyed based on his history against the orioles this season (myself included) and despite the numbers favouring liriano in this particular situation... so all analytics aside, baseball decisions arent always numbers related... jimenez just looked unstoppable against us a week or so again and then in the first inning he pitches tonight he gets rocked... what are the chances of that happening?

[BitsAndGlory]

I was at my friends watching the game

HOLY **** IM STILL AMPED

[Scott Hall]

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[Skin Blues]

what are the odds of him actually getting a base hit? or striking out? or grounding into a double play?

no, i dont care. i dont care if hes the **** bunter on the team. that has to be a bunt. you take that chance and if he **** up, he **** up. he also could **** up striking out, which he did, or he could **** up grounding into the double play. he could **** up many ways... laying down a bunt to advance a runner to third with no out to me is the safest bet. asking bautista to bunt isnt the same as asking ryan goins to hit a home run. its not as "tricky" a situation as people make it seem... were not asking him to bunt for a base hit here... were simply asking him to put some wood on the ball.

No, it's seriously tricky. Here's a good primer:

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/the-truth-about-bunting/

I collected data from between 2008-2013. I classified things simply: a good bunt is a fair ball in play, and a bad bunt is a foul bunt or a missed bunt. Of course, not all fair bunts are good bunts. Of course, this misses out on bunts that were pulled back at the last second. This tracks only bunts that were committed to. Over the six years, there’s a sample of more than 36,000.

The breakdown:

Overall: 49.7% fair bunts
Pitchers: 49.9%
Non-Pitchers: 49.6%
The sample for pitchers is about 10,000. The sample for non-pitchers is about 26,000. There’s basically no difference. About half the time they’ve committed to a bunt, they’ve bunted the ball in play. That means that, half the time, they’ve messed up.

I decided to look at individual players, and compare guys who bunt often against guys who bunt infrequently. I set the following thresholds:

Frequent bunters: bunt attempts on 2.5% or more of all pitches
Infrequent bunters: bunt attempts on 0.5% or less of all pitches
The frequent bunters bunted the ball fair 49.5% of the time. The infrequent bunters bunted the ball fair 46.1% of the time. I should note before I forget that I excluded pitchers from this. There’s a clear advantage to bunting more often, in terms of bunt success, but it’s also pretty small, and even the upper-tier bunters, as a group, bunt poorly a lot.

Even frequent bunters will foul the ball off half the time. So the odds of Jose accomplishing nothing more than getting an 0-2 count are greater than 25% to begin with. And advancing the runners doesn't actually increase the odds of scoring a run all that much, if accomplished: per Tom Tango's run expectancy matrix, the odds of scoring in an inning are 61% with runners at 1st and 2nd with none out, and 67.6% with runners at 2nd and 3rd with one out.

So, you're relying on a player who happens to be one of our best hitters, who doesn't bunt, and who has slow runners on the basepaths to execute a genuinely difficult skill in order to do something that, if successful, will increase our chances of scoring by....6.1%.

so you pulled out all these numbers to prove how tricky it is to bunt in this situation...

then you say bautista is one of our best hitters but thats irrelevant because if youre gonna use situational metrics to prove how tricky it is to bunt, then what are the chances of bautista getting a base hit in that situation? what are the chances he strikes out? what are the chances he grounds into a double play? what are the chances we score no runs in that inning? those numbers also have to be brought to light.

still, those numbers dont matter when it comes time to play... you think john gibbons has that stat sheet out there and those numbers are the reason he didnt ask jose to bunt? he looked at those stats, calculated his odds of successfully completing the bunt and successfully scoring the run and deemed that it wasnt worth it? no... thats not what happened here.

at the end of the day, you concluded by saying it will INCREASE our chances of scoring by 6.1%... six percent is a very small number... but if youre going strictly by numbers, then technically it is the safer play if it increases the odds of scoring... and my logic behind suggesting a bunt should be made didnt even take any of those numbers into consideration... but strictly from a baseball standpoint, as in what is the best way to advance the runners and put yourself in a position to score that winning run? thats gotta be a bunt. i honestly dont care how you wanna slice it, but im pretty sure the only reason gibbons didnt ask jose to bunt there was because he trusted in his gut that he would come through with a hit and would rather take that chance than playing small... if we had lost this game, i guarantee that not bunting in that situation would be a huge topic of discussion right now.

stroman also came through clutch with a good game despite a lot of people thinking he would get destroyed based on his history against the orioles this season (myself included) and despite the numbers favouring liriano in this particular situation... so all analytics aside, baseball decisions arent always numbers related... jimenez just looked unstoppable against us a week or so again and then in the first inning he pitches tonight he gets rocked... what are the chances of that happening?

Just stop talking. It's clearly not a subject you should be arguing about. Just say "you gotta get the runners over, make productive outs!! Thanks for taking my call, I'll hang up and listen." and be done with it. You're clearly not in any position to be arguing about probabilities.

[LRJ]

[Boogie!]

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i really hope we get to the world series this year man... really worried about the red sox though, their hitting looks pretty unstoppable... theyre like the perfect combination of us from last year and the royals... they come up with big timely hits, and have a lot of good contact hitters who hit for average but they can also drop bombs with the long ball... scary scary stuff... also now that their pitching is on point, theyre the favourites to make the world series out of the AL. but anything can happen. thats whats so great about baseball... anyone in the playoffs has a shot at winning it all..

[Schad]

then you say bautista is one of our best hitters but thats irrelevant because if youre gonna use situational metrics to prove how tricky it is to bunt, then what are the chances of bautista getting a base hit in that situation? what are the chances he strikes out? what are the chances he grounds into a double play? what are the chances we score no runs in that inning? those numbers also have to be brought to light.

those numbers dont matter when it comes time to play... you think john gibbons has that stat sheet out there and those numbers are the reason he didnt ask jose to bunt? he looked at those stats, calculated his odds of successfully completing the bunt and successfully scoring the run and deemed that it wasnt worth it? no... thats not what happened here.

at the end of the day, you concluded by saying it will INCREASE our chances of scoring by 6.1%... six percent is a very small number... but if youre going strictly by numbers, then technically it is the safer play if it increases the odds of scoring... and my logic behind suggesting a bunt should be made didnt even take any of those numbers into consideration... but strictly from a baseball standpoint, as in what is the best way to advance the runners and put yourself in a position to score that winning run? thats gotta be a bunt. i honestly dont care how you wanna slice it, but im pretty sure the only reason gibbons didnt ask jose to bunt there was because he trusted in his gut that he would come through with a hit and would rather take that chance than playing small... if we had lost this game, i guarantee that not bunting in that situation would be a huge topic of discussion right now.

6.1% is the increase IF IT WORKS. That's not the success rate of moving the runners over, it's the difference in likely outcome between the starting point (1st/2nd, no outs) and the desired end state (2nd/3rd, one out). That doesn't take into account the possibility of him popping up to the catcher, or bunting too firmly and it turning into a double play, or simply bunting foul twice before having a much lower likelihood of a good outcome. Meanwhile, Bautista's odds of winning the game outright are about 23%, as that's his batting average. His odds of a walk (which would raise the likelihood of scoring a run to 86.1% per Tango, a far greater increase than the mythical successful bunt) are well over 10%. Those are things that I'd rely on far more heavily than his chances of bunting successfully.

Gibbons wasn't 'trusting his gut'. He was trusting all logic that you don't ask a slugger to execute a difficult skill against a tough pitcher when he hasn't **** attempted that skill since 2009. This board's obsession with having our best hitters bunt is truly one of the more baffling things I have ever chanced across.

[Rapcity_11]

No, it's seriously tricky. Here's a good primer:

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/the-truth-about-bunting/



Even frequent bunters will foul the ball off half the time. So the odds of Jose accomplishing nothing more than getting an 0-2 count are greater than 25% to begin with. And advancing the runners doesn't actually increase the odds of scoring a run all that much, if accomplished: per Tom Tango's run expectancy matrix, the odds of scoring in an inning are 61% with runners at 1st and 2nd with none out, and 67.6% with runners at 2nd and 3rd with one out.

So, you're relying on a player who happens to be one of our best hitters, who doesn't bunt, and who has slow runners on the basepaths to execute a genuinely difficult skill in order to do something that, if successful, will increase our chances of scoring by....6.1%.

so you pulled out all these numbers to prove how tricky it is to bunt in this situation...

then you say bautista is one of our best hitters but thats irrelevant because if youre gonna use situational metrics to prove how tricky it is to bunt, then what are the chances of bautista getting a base hit in that situation? what are the chances he strikes out? what are the chances he grounds into a double play? what are the chances we score no runs in that inning? those numbers also have to be brought to light.

still, those numbers dont matter when it comes time to play... you think john gibbons has that stat sheet out there and those numbers are the reason he didnt ask jose to bunt? he looked at those stats, calculated his odds of successfully completing the bunt and successfully scoring the run and deemed that it wasnt worth it? no... thats not what happened here.

at the end of the day, you concluded by saying it will INCREASE our chances of scoring by 6.1%... six percent is a very small number... but if youre going strictly by numbers, then technically it is the safer play if it increases the odds of scoring... and my logic behind suggesting a bunt should be made didnt even take any of those numbers into consideration... but strictly from a baseball standpoint, as in what is the best way to advance the runners and put yourself in a position to score that winning run? thats gotta be a bunt. i honestly dont care how you wanna slice it, but im pretty sure the only reason gibbons didnt ask jose to bunt there was because he trusted in his gut that he would come through with a hit and would rather take that chance than playing small... if we had lost this game, i guarantee that not bunting in that situation would be a huge topic of discussion right now.

stroman also came through clutch with a good game despite a lot of people thinking he would get destroyed based on his history against the orioles this season (myself included) and despite the numbers favouring liriano in this particular situation... so all analytics aside, baseball decisions arent always numbers related... jimenez just looked unstoppable against us a week or so again and then in the first inning he pitches tonight he gets rocked... what are the chances of that happening?

Just stop talking. It's clearly not a subject you should be arguing about. Just say "you gotta get the runners over, make productive outs!! Thanks for taking my call, I'll hang up and listen." and be done with it. Clearly not in any positron to be arguing about probabilities.

I'll never understand why people think bunting is so easy and will automatically advance the runners. Chances are, Jose **** bautista has no idea how to bunt. Also, that 6.1% was so hilariously misinterpreted...

[Scott Hall]

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[RalphWiggum]

After revelling in the victory I'm still stunned at Buck never using Britton. I get holding off a while but how could he never get in a game this big by the 11th? Fire Worthy.

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[Boogie!]

After revelling in the victory I'm still stunned at Buck never using Britton. I get holding off a while but how could he never get in a game this big by the 11th? Fire Worthy.

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i can understand him using ubaldo (since ubaldo shut us down last week i think) thinking the game would extend a few more innings and saving britton for the close, what i dont understand is when we had runners on 1st and 3rd with 1 out, why he didnt pull ubaldo ASAP and use britton then. in a do or die situation you need to go with your lockdown closer... does ubaldo have an exceptionally high ground ball rate that he trusted he could generate the double play? either way, thats the only part of his decision i question. not the fact that he didnt use britton in general because if ubaldo was pitching well and could extend the game hed have britton ready to close, but the fact that in that specific situation, why he didnt bite the bullet and just bring him out right there.

[Asianiac_24]

Asking Jose Bautista to bunt is just stupidity because 1. He can't bunt, 2. He is one of our best hitters. Having him bunt would most likely just have him batting with a 0-2 or 1-2 count anyways.

[RalphWiggum]

Between game 6 against Atlanta, game 4 and 6 against the Phillies, game 5 against against Texas and tonight's game I don't think it's a stretch to say the Jay's have been involved in 6 of the best 30 or so games in playoff history. As tortured as we've been we've had some pretty incredible moments for a relatively young team.

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[BigLeagueChew]

Stroman pitched an interesting game tonight. He used 53 pitches that moved to his left. Cutters, Sliders, Curves. Fastballs he only threw 27. This would be the sinker and 4 seam fastballs.

It looked different from other starts by him so I went back and looked at his last start against Baltimore, Sept 29th.They decided to throw 43 sinkers that game, 50 fastballs in total.

So in the WC game he tossed %65 breaking pitches(31 cutters) and only %20 sinkers. The game last week %43 sinkers and %48 breaking pitches(21 curve balls, 17 cutters and 10 sliders).

Perhaps it was by design the way he pitched or maybe Stroman wasn't feeling his sinker tonight but the way he pitched other than the inside pitch to Trumbo was very good. He's seemingly able to look like two different pitchers as far as style, which is good because you wouldn't really want a pitcher throwing %65 breaking pitches every game as far as long term health is concerned, he picked a good time to put the sinker in his back pocket tonight.

That pitch to Trumbo though...yikes. Am not sure why they decide to give someone that hit 47 home runs pitch like that to hit. Please throw it outside or in off the plate to other teams cleanup hitters.

[Hoopstarr]

After revelling in the victory I'm still stunned at Buck never using Britton. I get holding off a while but how could he never get in a game this big by the 11th? Fire Worthy.

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We've been handed incredible gifts in two must win games over the last year. I'll (try to) never complain about bad luck again. Even better that those gifts came right after what looked to be disastrous turns against us, namely the Martin-Choo incident and tonight's three GIDPs and Osuna's exit.

[Scott Hall]

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