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Thursday, January 05, 2006

Holding Down the Sacrifice

As promised I posted a few refinements and explanation on my article Not So Sweet Surrender in a new article titled Sacrificing in 2005 Redux over at THT.

Probably the most interesting conclusion there was that pitchers sacrifice percentages are almost 20% lower than position players. However, when you take into account the low percentage attempts with two strikes which result in strikeouts 70% of the time, the difference shrinks to around 7 to 8%. One interested reader pointed out that while this difference might be mostly due to the fact that pitchers simply don't bunt as well, it may also be that defenses play more aggressively when a pitcher is in a sacrifice situation. The third and first baseman sometimes are sitting right on top of the pitcher when he bunts, turning any sub-optimal bunt into a potential force out or double play. That makes a great deal of sense to me.

To pretty much wrap up this subject and get on with other things, I took a look at the sacrifice percentage against pitchers in the 2003-2005 period. What follows are those pitchers who had 20 or more attempts against them and the percentage of successful sacrifices.


Att Succ Pct
John Thomson 22 21 0.955
Sidney Ponson 20 19 0.950
Jamie Moyer 27 25 0.926
Roberto Hernandez 23 21 0.913
Mark Buehrle 23 21 0.913
Tim Hudson 34 31 0.912
Rick White 21 19 0.905
Shawn Chacon 31 28 0.903
Eric Milton 20 18 0.900
Jae Seo 36 32 0.889
CC Sabathia 26 23 0.885
David Wells 25 22 0.880
Vicente Padilla 32 28 0.875
Kenny Rogers 24 21 0.875
Tom Glavine 47 41 0.872
Bartolo Colon 23 20 0.870
Greg Maddux 53 46 0.868
Shawn Estes 45 39 0.867
Barry Zito 30 26 0.867
Kyle Lohse 22 19 0.864
Freddy Garcia 22 19 0.864
Matt Morris 38 32 0.842
Cory Lidle 43 36 0.837
Ismael Valdez 24 20 0.833
Brad Radke 29 24 0.828
Jim Brower 23 19 0.826
Salomon Torres 22 18 0.818
David Weathers 22 18 0.818
Mike Maroth 32 26 0.813
Kip Wells 37 30 0.811
Nate Robertson 21 17 0.810
Jon Lieber 21 17 0.810
Wilson Alvarez 20 16 0.800
Jake Westbrook 20 16 0.800
Glendon Rusch 35 28 0.800
Byung-Hyun Kim 20 16 0.800
Jeff Suppan 39 31 0.795
Derek Lowe 34 27 0.794
Paul Wilson 29 23 0.793
Todd Jones 24 19 0.792
Jason Jennings 37 29 0.784
Brett Myers 32 25 0.781
Horacio Ramirez 36 28 0.778
Esteban Loaiza 27 21 0.778
Aaron Harang 40 31 0.775
Jon Garland 31 24 0.774
Wayne Franklin 26 20 0.769
Julian Tavarez 21 16 0.762
John Lackey 21 16 0.762
Jeff Fassero 21 16 0.762
Chris Capuano 29 22 0.759
Carl Pavano 29 22 0.759
Odalis Perez 41 31 0.756
Mike Hampton 32 24 0.750
Luis Ayala 20 15 0.750
Jerome Williams 32 24 0.750
Hideo Nomo 36 27 0.750
Chris Carpenter 20 15 0.750
Josh Fogg 31 23 0.742
Jeff Weaver 31 23 0.742
Brandon Backe 23 17 0.739
Kevin Millwood 42 31 0.738
Brian Lawrence 38 28 0.737
Curt Schilling 26 19 0.731
Kazuhisa Ishii 35 25 0.714
Joe Kennedy 21 15 0.714
Roy Oswalt 48 34 0.708
Andy Pettitte 24 17 0.708
Woody Williams 41 29 0.707
Steve Trachsel 30 21 0.700
Brett Tomko 40 28 0.700
Kris Benson 23 16 0.696
Livan Hernandez 52 36 0.692
Randy Wolf 29 20 0.690
Miguel Batista 29 20 0.690
Mark Redman 45 31 0.689
Mark Mulder 35 24 0.686
Jason Schmidt 35 24 0.686
Giovanni Carrara 22 15 0.682
Claudio Vargas 22 15 0.682
Carlos Silva 25 17 0.680
Jason Johnson 28 19 0.679
Adam Eaton 34 23 0.676
Josh Beckett 37 25 0.676
Javier Vazquez 37 25 0.676
Jake Peavy 27 18 0.667
Carlos Zambrano 50 33 0.660
Oliver Perez 29 19 0.655
Doug Davis 49 32 0.653
Elmer Dessens 23 15 0.652
Kirk Rueter 37 24 0.649
Brandon Webb 54 35 0.648
Tim Redding 34 22 0.647
Al Leiter 45 29 0.644
Matt Clement 28 18 0.643
Ben Sheets 39 25 0.641
Kevin Brown 25 16 0.640
Mark Prior 36 23 0.639
Russ Ortiz 33 21 0.636
Randy Johnson 30 19 0.633
Kerry Wood 30 19 0.633
Noah Lowry 24 15 0.625
Dontrelle Willis 40 25 0.625
AJ Burnett 24 15 0.625
Roger Clemens 34 21 0.618
Tomo Ohka 31 19 0.613
Brad Penny 28 17 0.607
Jason Marquis 22 10 0.455

Perusing the list you can probably tell that there are more soft tossers in the top half and more hard throwers in the bottom. This is in fact borne out when you split the list into two groups. In one group put those who had a percentage of .75 and higher and in the other those with lower than .75 and you get.

Count Pct K/9 BB/9
High Sac Pct 58 .825 5.82 2.60
Low Sac Pct 50 .670 6.85 2.80

The difference between strikeout rates climbs when you make the cutoffs >=.85 and < .65 where they are 7.24 and 6.03 respectively.

This squares with our common sense expectation. Among the many other benefits of a 94mph fastball is that it makes it more difficult for hitters to lay down bunts.

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