Small Ball is for Suckers

In the 9th inning of Sunday afternoon's game against the Astros, the Brewers (down 2-0) had runners on first and second with 0 outs and Felipe Lopez at the plate. As the post-game lamentations expressed by my esteemed colleagues indicated, some felt that a sacrifice bunt was in order. With runners on 2nd a 3rd and 1 out, a simple single would tie the game--so the logic goes. But is the logic sound? According to the experts at Baseball Prospectus (as well as several other sabrematricians who have studied the numbers at length), the answer is a resounding "no." The following run expectancy matrix from 2009 illustrates the their reasoning:

#	YEAR	RUNNERS	EXP_R_OUTS_0	EXP_R_OUTS_1	EXP_R_OUTS_2
1.	2009	000	0.52028	0.28262	0.1048
2.	2009	003	1.2938	0.9542	0.38462
3.	2009	020	1.13062	0.69715	0.32262
4.	2009	023	2.00907	1.42604	0.57994
5.	2009	100	0.89166	0.54317	0.218
6.	2009	103	1.76796	1.16954	0.55324
7.	2009	120	1.50136	0.92994	0.45553
8.	2009	123	2.28799	1.59077	0.77906

The data shows that run expectancy is higher when there are runners on 1st and 2nd with no outs (1.501) compared to runners on 2nd and 3rd with 1 out (1.426). While the spread fluctuates from year to year, the difference is usually between a half run and a full run (see more here).

Now consider the fact that a sacrifice bunt is not always successful. As this insightful and exhaustive article from the Hardball Times notes, sacrifice bunts fail around 25% of the time (yes, the fail rate is lower when pitchers are taken out of the equation, but the article applies the necessary adjustments and reaches the same conclusion).

As the preceding research (in addition to recent works outlining the extent of the importance of On-base Percentage) demonstrates, voluntarily giving up one your 27 outs is NOT an advisable strategy.

As frustrating as it is see the Brewers squander opportunities with runners on base, giving up outs to move runners over (i.e. small ball) will only decrease the team's run expectancy and exacerbate the problem.

Macha played it right