Playing Hard Instead of Smart
With the bases loaded and one out in the ninth in last night’s game, Lou Piniella made a pretty poor decision. Jose Valverde had absolutely no command, and Piniella decided to order Mike Fontenot to bunt, looking to win the game on the squeeze play. Fontenot bunted through the ball, and Milton Bradley, coming in from third, was tagged out. A few pitches later, Fontenot flied out to center to end the inning and the game went into extras. As Koyie Hill had already been pulled for a pinch hitter, Jake Fox had to come in to catch.
In his career, Fontenot has four sacrifice bunts in over 850 plate appearances. I don’t know how many times he has failed to get a bunt down, and I’m honestly unsure where to find that information. But Valverde didn’t have any command, and a walk wins that game. Or a base hit. Or a deep fly ball. And if Fontenot made an out, the next man up could win the game with a walk or a base hit, so long as Fontenot didn’t get doubled up.
Fontenot has been bad this year, but he reaches base 30 percent of the time. Any way he did that would have won the game for the Cubs. He’s also hit fly balls 39 percent of the time, and a lot of flyball outs would have ended the game, too. He strikes out 24 percent of the time, and a strikeout would have let Reed Johnson bat.
Looking at those numbers, then, if Fontenot swings away, the Cubs have probably a 50/50 chance of winning in his at bat. And if he strikes out or does anything but GIDP, Reed Johnson gets a chance to win it, and with a .333 OBP, the Cubs win the game about one in three times if he bats with the bases loaded. And all of that’s ignoring the fact that Valverde couldn’t throw strikes, making it less likely you could get a bunt down and more likely that the Cubs simply could have had the winning run walked in.
According to Fangraphs, the Cubs had an 83 percent chance of winning the game after Fukudome walked. After the failed bunt, that dropped to 64.1 percent, and after the flyout, to 50 percent. When there are as many ways to win the game as there were during Fontenot’s at bat, doing something risky just doesn’t make sense. Instead of making Valverde throw strikes, they gave him a lifeline, and he got out of the inning. It might have been smarted to just tell Fontenot to take no matter what the pitch was and dare Valverde to throw four strikes. But the Cubs didn’t. Ultimately, they won the game in dramatic fashion, but they could have done it a lot more quickly if Lou hadn’t over-managed.
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I guess where I start to wonder about the decision is if that's what you're going to do, just use your best bunter (a pitcher). the defense is going to be protecting against the squeeze in that situation anyway and it doesn't matter if it's a good bunt. Pitchers get bunts down a little over 80% of the time and probably have a lot more control over where it's bunted at.
by using the pitcher you take away any element of surprise making it more difficult while you gain a bit of that element of surprise making it more effective. It's probably about the same value from a pitcher or position player. I assume Lou has seen Fontenot bunt in practice, and felt he could do it. If not, it's a very questionable call.
I guess I just don't think the wildness of the pitcher previously can come into the decision-making process unless we know that pitchers who lose control continue to lose it. I don't think that's true.
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