For the love of all that is holy, tell Andres Gimenez to stop sacrifice bunting
As a Stephen Vogt fan, I want to make an appeal for him to distinguish his tenure from Terry Francona’s in one simple yet significant move: tell Andres Gimenez to stop sacrifice bunting.
I want to begin by stating that, generally speaking, I have no qualm with players bunting for the purpose of getting on base. Getting on base is always the goal, by any legal means necessary.
With that said, over the past three seasons, there are six qualified hitters with more than 7 sacrifice bunts. Here are their number of sac bunts and overall hitting numbers:
Geraldo Perdomo - 26 sac bunts, 79 wRC+
Trent Grisham - 11 sac bunts, 86 wRC+
Andres Gimenez - 9 sac bunts, 118 wRC+
Ha-Seong Kim - 9 sac bunts, 108 wRC+
Adam Frazier - 8 sac bunts, 84 wRC+
Myles Straw - 8 sac bunts, 68 wRC+
I hope you can already see the outlier on this list. While I have some thoughts for Bob Melvin and Mike Shildt on what they should say to Kim, overall, Gimenez has a wRC+ that is THIRTY-THREE runs created higher than the average wRC+ on this list. Simply put, without any further analysis, you can look at this list and say definitely, Gimenez is not a player out of whose hands you want to take that bat to intentionally give the other team outs. If it ever happens - maybe Gimenez has the flu and it’s the bottom of an extra inning with no outs and runner on 2nd and one run wins the game - it should happen once every total solar eclipse not at a rate that puts him among the top five sacrifice bunters in baseball.
However, there is a relevant pattern for Cleveland to be explored here. Among qualified hitters from 2017-2020, here’s our sacrifice bunt leaders:
Yolmer Sanchez - 16 sacrifice bunts, 86 wRC+
Dee Strange-Gordon - 14 sacrifice bunts, 81 wRC+
Jorge Polanco - 14 sacrifice bunts, 105 wRC+
Jose Peraza - 11 sacrifice bunts, 75 wRC+
Brett Gardner - 9 sacrifice bunts, 106 wRC+
Francisco Lindor - 9 sacrifice bunts, 120 wRC+
Again, I have some thoughts for Polanco and Gardner’s managers about how they could have gotten more out of their respective league average hitters in Polanco and Gardner, but the outlier here is Francisco Lindor, who has a wRC+ THIRTY points higher than the average wRC+ on this list. He is unequivocally not someone you want giving the other team free outs in 99.9% of scenarios, and certainly not at a rate that would have him showing up on this leaderboard.
Now, let me get some necessary caveats out of the way. Lindor and Gimenez are absolutely not unintelligent baseball players; they are the exact opposite of that. They are defensive savants, baserunning geniuses and some of the smartest ballplayers you’ll ever see don the Cleveland uniform. When these superstars bunt, it is because they have been taught their entire lives that the good of the team is primary and they are nobly sacrificing their ability to swing the bat for the purpose - they believe - of promoting their team’s chances to win a baseball game. They are sincere and well-meaning. They are also wrong.
Similarly, Terry Francona is a future hall of fame manager who restored glory and prestige to Cleveland baseball. He knows more about baseball than I’ll ever dream of knowing. Stephen Vogt is a worthy successor to Tito who seems incredibly smart and deeply in tune with the insights of analytics. However, both managers are clearly from the player-manager school. They “trust their guys”, they see intrinsic value in players having the ability to play the game without coaches peering over their shoulder to tell them what to do all the time. And, I’m sure they are right to hold these perspectives, in general. There is, indeed, value in players like Lindor and Gimenez knowing moment-by-moment that their managers have implicit trust in them to do whatever it takes to win a baseball game.
With all of those caveats aside, I believe it is time for Stephen Vogt to do what Tito was never willing to do for either his all-star shortstop or his all-star second baseman: tell Andres Gimenez that he is not allowed to sacrifice bunt unless the dugout puts the sign on to do so. And, then, proceed to never put the sign on to do so unless that .01 percentile scenario I described above comes into play.
At this point in the article, you may believe I am making a mountain out of a mole hill and majoring on the minors. While I freely admit that nine unnecessary outs over three seasons removes at most three potential hits, walks or hit-by-pitches (the last outcome particularly in play in Gimenez’s case), I would also point you to the inability for us to properly calculate the number of times Lindor and Gimenez have either squared to bunt and fallen behind in counts while taking a hittable pitch, attempted to bunt and fouled off one or multiple pitches falling behind in counts, OR, as Gimenez did in yesterday’s extra-inning loss to Houston, failed to get a bunt down properly and popping out to quell a rally (or hitting a bunt too hard that results in a lead runner getting thrown out, etc). Is this something that happens every game? Despite the FEELING that it IS, I know that it is not. Does every out in every game have significant value in what appears to be set to be a tight division race? Absolutely. Cleveland is not the kind of organization that is throwing enough money at their roster to afford to not get every kind of value at the margins.
We have long had the run-expectancy numbers to know that giving another team an out, even for the exchange of a runner advancing, is almost always a bad mathematical play. I believe Tito knew these numbers and I believe Vogt knows them. Currently, Vogt seems to be joining Tito in believing that the value exchanged in the lowered run-expectancy provided by a sacrifice bunt for the knowledge from star players that their team and manager trust them to do what’s best is a trade worth making. Respectfully, I disagree.
It’s time for the manager to manage, as he’s proven himself very capable of doing already. It’s time for the leader who is exceptional at making players feel good about themselves to explain to Gimenez that he is a dangerous hitter at all times and that opposing teams breathe a sigh of relief whenever he squares to bunt. If the Guardians want to be relentlessly at the throat of other teams, trying to push every possible run off the board, they need to tell Gimenez to stop squaring to bunt and hang in the box looking to do damage and to get on base.
