Unwritten

by Danny Knobler

  The bunt worked.

  It does work sometimes, even now.

  44. Welcome to Japan, Where the Bunt Still Lives

  FOR A VISITOR FROM NORTH AMERICA, A professional baseball game in Japan or Korea is a familiar yet foreign experience. There’s the grilled eel at the concession stand, the carefully coordinated cheers and songs coming from the oendan section in the outfield…

  And the sacrifice bunt after the leadoff hitter reaches base in the first inning.

  True sacrifice bunts have nearly disappeared in the major leagues, thanks to analytics that show they’re rarely a smart play. But even as analytics have started to cross the Pacific Ocean and move into the Asian versions of the game, no team has yet abandoned the strategy of giving up an out to move a runner over.

  Jim Allen, who has chronicled Japanese baseball for more than two decades and now writes about the game for Kyodo News, studied the 2017 season and found that of the 183 times the leadoff batter for the visiting team reached first base, the next batter attempted a bunt 51 times.

  In most of those cases, we’re talking about a real sacrifice attempt, too, the kind where the batter is actually trying to give himself up to get the runner over. There are a handful of major league hitters who will bunt in the first inning, too, but it’s always because they’re trying to bunt for a hit. Sometimes, they’re just taking advantage of a shift that leaves no one guarding the third-base line. They may get credit for a sacrifice if they do it with a runner on base, but it’s never designed that way, not in the first inning and most often not later in the game, either.

  The true sacrifice bunt is just not a high-value play. The numbers show even a team that puts down a successful sacrifice will score fewer runs on average in that inning than a team that doesn’t. Allen’s numbers show that’s just as true in Japan, where those 51 teams that attempted a bunt with their second batter scored an average of .76 runs in those innings, while the 132 that didn’t averaged .9 runs.

  Like their American counterparts, Japanese teams are paying more and more attention to numbers like that. But tradition dies hard in Japanese baseball, and tradition there says scoring the first run of the game matters more than almost anything.

  One Japanese baseball executive guesses that some players who know the numbers understand the first-inning bunts are rarely if ever good strategy.

  “They’re probably saying, ‘Aw, bunt again? This ain’t working,’” the executive said.

  Japanese teams were bunting slightly less often in 2018, but even the teams with the fewest bunts had more than nearly every team in the major leagues (despite playing fewer games).

  “The bunts are going to be there forever,” Warren Cromartie, who played 10 seasons in the major leagues and seven in Japan, told the Japan Times in 2018.

  That may be true, because Japanese managers have always been more reluctant to accept change than their American counterparts. Then again, as the Japanese executive said, most teams over there have added an analytics department in recent years. Just as in MLB, launch angles, spin rates and shifts have become part of the everyday conversation. Younger Japanese players are much more likely to study video of themselves and their opponents, where their predecessors may have tried to solve everything with more hours of practice.

  “While many managers still look at the game like in the old days, the game played by younger guys is changing,” the executive said.

  It’s unlikely to change completely, simply because the game as played in each country is influenced by the culture in that country. Julio Franco, the former major leaguer who played in both Japan and Korea and spent 2017 and 2018 as a hitting coach in the Korean league, learned one of the differences early on.

  “Here, a friend told me that, when you got a man on first and third, and there’s a grounder to the shortstop, they don’t try to break up the double play,” Franco told The Athletic in 2018. “In the United States, I break up the double play so the run scores. Here, it’s more of a friendlier game. In the United States, it’s a hard-nosed game—and you have to adjust to it. As soon as you adjust to it, you’re fine. But if you don’t get adjusted to it quickly, it plays a mad trick on your game.”

  “In Japan, it’s the Japanese way. In Korea, it’s the Korean way, and I understand that. Most guys have to get adjusted to it.”

  That’s equally true for players moving in the other direction. Players have come from Asia in greater numbers—35 ­Japanese-born players and 12 Korean-born players had at least one game in the big leagues in the last 10 years—and they’ve had to learn the unwritten rules and quirks of the game as it is played here.

  And while we may think some of those players would be more comfortable playing the way they did growing up in Japan, that isn’t always true. When I asked Dodgers pitcher Kenta Maeda if he misses the atmosphere of a big game in Japan, he said it was actually the other way around.

  “For Japanese people to come and see this, being here, it’s pretty cool,” Maeda said through an interpreter. “I like this kind of atmosphere. The fact that people actually clap when there’s a good play or a pitcher has a good outing. In Japan, you do hear the orchestrated band, but you don’t necessarily hear actual clapping.”

  As for those first-inning bunts, Maeda does miss seeing them—but only when he’s on the mound and he wishes the opposing team would do it.

  “I actually liked that as a pitcher, because it was an automatic out,” he said. “Over here, the hitters don’t necessarily do that, so I find it harder.”

  There are other differences between the game as played here and the one played there, but some of those are changing, too. Velo­cities are rising in Japan, just as here. Home run rates are, too.

  What hasn’t changed in Japan is that the idea of a pitcher intentionally throwing at a hitter as retaliation for a slight or a batter on his own team being hit is almost unknown.

  “In Japan, I think that’s very rare that they do that,” Maeda said. “I’m sure there is a rare case where it happens. I heard in Japan, there used to be a lot of retaliation, back in the day. But now I think it’s close to zero.”

  Then again, retaliation has become rarer in the American game in recent years. So maybe baseball in Japan and the major leagues is becoming more similar.

  Or maybe not. Listen to those orchestrated cheers.

  And watch for those first-inning bunts.

  45. You Don’t Have to Concede a Run (Even in the First Inning)

  NO MATTER WHAT THE UNWRITTEN RULE, THE best ­managers have always believed in challenging orthodoxy when the old way didn’t make sense.

  Jim Leyland knew that tradition says most of the time you play the infield back and concede a run on a groundout when there’s a runner on third and less than two out early in a game. He just didn’t agree with it, not with one out, not unless his team already had a bigger lead.

  Routinely, when he did it in the early innings, someone would say, “Leyland must think this is going to be a low-scoring game.”

  Not necessarily. He just didn’t believe in conceding an easy run when he didn’t have to.

  “From watching games when I managed in the minor leagues, I saw way too many times that a manager played his infield back and a guy hit a ground ball right at the shortstop,” Leyland said. “If he’d had the infield in, the runner either holds or you throw him out at the plate. And what [cutting off the run] does for your pitcher’s confidence is unbelievable.”

  Playing the infield in also put bigger pressure on the batter, who knew he had to do more than just make contact to drive in the run. The batter should understand that infield in means a better chance at a hit, but hitters don’t always react that way.

  So why not always play the infield in? Simple. It does give the batter a better chance at a hit. If you play the infield in with nobody out, you’re risking a big inning. It’s too important to get th
at first out, unless it’s already the middle to late innings and it’s a run you can’t afford to concede. While Leyland almost always played the infield in with one out, he would play his infield back in the early innings with none out and a runner at third.

  Even in later innings, playing the infield in can be a risk with runners at second and third. Play the infield back, and a ground ball scores one run. If that same ground ball scoots past a drawn-in infielder, two runs score.

  A manager has to read the game and react, based on his preparation.

  Everything comes into play. Who’s on the mound for you? What kind of pitcher is he? Who’s on the mound for the opposition? Is he Cy Young or does he give up his share of runs? How is your team swinging the bat? A manager should go through his mental checklist. Some may play it more by feel and some may play it by the book.

  “It’s a feel,” said Ron Gardenhire, a major league manager for 14 years. “With no one out in the early innings, I always played them back. With one out or later innings, it was a feel. If you were facing Roger Clemens, that was one thing. You had to think about their pitcher, and about your pitcher.”

  The way Leyland saw it, with one out he would rather take the chance of a run scoring on a ball through the drawn-in infield.

  “You can still get a double play and get out of the inning,” he said.

  But he wasn’t going to hand you a gimme run on an infield out.

  “People would say, ‘You played your infield in with one out and Mark McGwire up, how could you do that?’” Leyland said. “I said, ‘Mark McGwire hits home runs. If he mis-hits it and it goes to an infielder, I don’t want a run to score.’”

  46. You Can Make the First Out at Third Base (If You Play for Joe Maddon)

  IT’S EASIER TO SCORE FROM THIRD BASE THAN from ­second. That should be obvious.

  You’re 90 feet closer to home plate. You can score on a wild pitch or a passed ball, a balk, an infield hit, a squeeze bunt, or a sacrifice fly.

  It’s worth going from second to third. But not if you risk making the first or third out of the inning.

  That’s the unwritten rule, anyway, the one many of us learn as soon as we start playing the game. Don’t make the first out of an inning at third base, because you’re already in scoring position if you hold tight at second base. Don’t make the third out of an inning at third base, because even if you get there you can’t score on an out.

  “The risk—100-fold—is greater than the reward,” Minnesota Twins manager Paul Molitor, a Hall of Famer as a player, told reporters after an early-season game in 2016. “Being safe doesn’t make it right for me.”

  Molitor was explaining why he had pulled outfielder Eddie Rosario from a game after Rosario stole third with two out. ­Rosario saw that Detroit Tigers third baseman Nick ­Castellanos was shifted well away from the bag. He took off for third and he was safe.

  That wasn’t good enough for Molitor or for the Twins front office, which sent Rosario to the minor leagues the next day. The reward of getting to third didn’t match the risk of ending the inning, especially with the Twins down 5–0 in the seventh inning.

  But as with so many of the unwritten rules, not everyone agrees that this one should still apply.

  Joe Maddon wants his baserunners to have an aggressive mindset, and he’d rather risk the out than do anything that goes against that.

  “I don’t mind making the first or third out at third base,” ­Maddon told author Tom Verducci in The Cubs Way: The Zen of Building the Best Team in Baseball and Breaking the Curse. “I don’t give a rip—as opposed to using that line, which you’ve heard a hundred thousand times. I like to get to third base with less than two outs as often as possible. That’s what we say.

  “If everything is set up right and you’re making your reads and this guy makes a great play, so what? I’d rather us be aggressive at third, even making the first out there. But to make the first out at home would really bum me out. I don’t like that at all. It really fries your oysters.”

  There is a significant advantage to getting to third base, even with two out. Besides being able to score on a wild pitch, passed ball, balk, or infield hit, the threat of giving up a run on a pitch in the dirt can affect the way the pitcher feels comfortable attacking the batter at the plate.

  But if you get thrown out at third, that batter doesn’t get a chance at all, at least not with you standing in scoring position.

  The unwritten rule about not making the first out at home—the one Maddon does subscribe to—came about for the same reason as the third-base rule. If you’re on third base with nobody out, your team has two chances to get you home on an out. You even score on a double-play grounder. Best-case scenario, your team is set up for potentially a big inning.

  Making the first out at home would cancel all of that out. It really isn’t worth the risk.

  As Verducci points out, Maddon is often willing to go against “The Book,” to use another word for the unwritten rules. He once ordered an intentional walk that moved the tying run to third base and the winning run into scoring position at second, and it worked. He had Josh Hamilton walked with the bases loaded (and won that game).

  Maddon told Verducci that he had to try different things when he was managing the small-market Rays against the giants of the American League East.

  “If you try to go with the conventional, you are going to get your brains beat out,” he said. “They have greater ability to win with more tried-and-true than you do.”

  Now that he’s in Chicago managing the Cubs, Maddon has the team with that “greater ability to win.” He doesn’t need to be as unconventional—but he would still prefer aggressive baserunners, even if it means making the first or third out at third base.

  Most others still hold to the rule, but players and base coaches break it all the time.

  It happened to the Yankees in Game 2 of the 2017 ALCS. Brett Gardner hit a ball into the right-field corner with two out in the third inning of a scoreless game. Gardner had a chance at a triple and, in fact, he was initially called safe as he slid into third base. With the aid of video replay, though, he was called out. He was waved on to third base by an anxious third-base coach (Joe Espada), and he knew he was out before they even went to review.

  It doesn’t matter that it was a close play, or that it took a perfect relay throw from Carlos Correa to get him. With two out in the inning, it’s a chance you just can’t take. It felt worse because Aaron Judge was due up next, but it’s a chance you don’t take no matter who is at the plate.

  There’s no way to know if Gardner would have scored had he held at second. What we do know is the Yankees didn’t score in the inning, and they went on to lose the game, 2–1.

  It’s surprising how many players still take that chance. In the 2017 season alone, 14 baserunners were thrown out trying to steal third with two out, many bringing a reaction from the manager similar to the one Royals manager Ned Yost had when Alcides Escobar was thrown out with Lorenzo Cain at the plate in the eighth inning of a 3–3 game.

  “You’ve got to make sure you can steal the base,” Yost told reporters. “There’s gotta be no question. It’s gotta be like 99 percent, you know. That didn’t work out, pushing the envelope.”

  Yost would likely have had no problem had Escobar tried to steal third with one out.

  By getting to third with one out, you can score on an out. You might even force the other team to play the infield in, improving the chances that the next batter gets a hit. You might even make the pitcher and catcher think twice about throwing a two-strike breaking ball in the dirt, because of the risk it goes to the screen and costs them a run.

  So why doesn’t the same apply with no one out? You can still score on an out, and you still score if the ball gets to the screen. The difference is you have two chances to get the run home from second base. You have a better chance at a big
inning. It’s not yet worth taking the risk on an out.

  It’s still not as bad as making the third out at third base.

  47. You Can Pick Your Poison

  SPARKY ANDERSON LOVED THE INTENTIONAL walk. He thought it was one of the greatest gifts the baseball rules gave to a manager. If they were going to let you choose not to face the best hitter in the other lineup, he was going to take advantage any time he could.

  Year after year, Sparky would lead the league in issuing intentional walks. If he looked at the stat sheet and he wasn’t leading, he’d actually look upset. In Anderson’s mind, that meant he wasn’t taking enough of the opportunities the game handed him.

  But even Anderson never intentionally walked anyone with the bases loaded.

  Buck Showalter did that, when he was managing the expansion Arizona Diamondbacks in 1998. The D-Backs went 65–97 that year, but one of the wins came on May 28 in San Francisco. With two out in the ninth inning that night, Showalter’s team held an 8–6 lead with Barry Bonds coming to the plate.

  Not only was Bonds maybe the most dangerous hitter in baseball, but he was also red-hot, with 15 hits in his last 36 at-bats (.417), including four doubles and three home runs. With two out and the bases loaded, even a single from Bonds would have given the Giants a win.

  Showalter wasn’t taking a chance, especially with closer Gregg Olson already having thrown nearly 50 pitches in the game.

  “I was physically done,” Olson remembered years later. “I’d come in the game in the eighth inning to face Bonds, and I still think I struck him out, but [home-plate umpire Ed Montague] wouldn’t call the 3-2 pitch a strike. But Barry had seen my best stuff in the eighth, and that was when I was still strong. By the time he came up in the ninth, I was exhausted.”

  Showalter put up four fingers to call for the intentional walk. Catcher Kelly Stinnett looked at Showalter, looked around the bases to remind himself they were loaded, and then looked back.