Laying it down, part 2

Last week, I used some different metrics to quantify bunting performance in 2010.  In this post, I would like to build on what I found after researching the first part of this post.  The clear issue with using data from only one year is that it becomes susceptible to small sample sizes, and since bunt attempts occur on such a small percentage of swings, that issue is magnified in this case.  In order to get a better feel for bunting skill, I've set up the statistics I used last week for 2008 and 2009 data.  Before I get into go on, I'd like to revisit the league averages that I showed at the beginning of last week's post. 

	Attempt%	Fair%	Foul%	Missed%
2008	.020	.501	.425	.074
2009	.020	.509	.421	.070
2010	.019	.505	.416	.080
	.019	.502	.423	.075

	Hit%	Out%	Sac%	Double Play%
2008	.189	.285	.515	.011
2009	.177	.288	.528	.007
2010	.188	.286	.517	.009
	.184	.286	.520	.009

The league-wide samples stay pretty consistent year to year, which is good for establishing baselines for these metrics.  However, the samples that I used in last week's post (20 bunt attempts or 10 fair bunts) did not correlate very well year-to-year.  Notable R^2 are as follows: hit% - .514, out% - .226, sac% - .528, Bunt Runs/100 - .178.  The one that surprised me the most, however, was coefficient of determination for fair bunt%.  That was only .065, which I found strange considering fair bunt% appears to be a distinct skill.  Bear in mind that even though we're looking at three years' worth of data, it's still a small sample size.  In order to get players that were qualified bunters in back-to-back years, I had to eliminate all but 82 of the individual seasons.  I was particularly puzzled by the low correlation for fair bunts, which I figured would be a detectable skill even in the limited sample.  

Since we appear to have some of the SSS blues, I think the best way for us to cheer ourselves up is to open up the leaderboards to include 2008 and 2009 data.  Well, maybe that's just me.  Anyway, this section is going to contain a lot of tables - I'll have leaders and trailers for all of the metrics I discussed last week, along with some commentary when I feel it is necessary.  Also, the minimums are now at 50 bunt attempts and 25 fair bunts.  I'll begin with attempt percentage, for which I won't show any trailers (there 55 qualified players who haven't attempted a bunt in the three years).  Oh, also, the swing minimum for attempt% is 1,000. 

Rank	Name	Swing#	Attempt%
1	Willy Taveras	1625	.118
2	Carlos Gomez	2178	.114
3	Julio Borbon	1049	.104
4	Emilio Bonifacio	1666	.093
5	Erick Aybar	2420	.092
6	Nyjer Morgan	2181	.091
7	Juan Pierre	2386	.086
8	Gregor Blanco	1293	.081
9	Alexi Casilla	1290	.078
10	Luis Castillo	1652	.076

   

My love for the fair bunt% statistic is slightly diminished after seeing how poorly it correlated in my data, but I still think that it's an important statistic to look at.  Below are the 10 leaders and trailers for fair bunt%; Chris Young (of the Diamondbacks) is really in a league of his own. 

Rank	Name	Attempts	Fair Bunt%
1	Ramon Santiago	65	.769
2	Joey Gathright	78	.692
3	David Eckstein	78	.679
4	Clayton Kershaw	62	.677
5	Zach Duke	64	.672
6	Scott Podsednik	68	.662
7	Cole Hamels	53	.660
8	Franklin Gutierrez	51	.627
9	Ryan Dempster	80	.625
10	Elvis Andrus	103	.621
1x	Chris Young	51	.157
2x	Rajai Davis	78	.295
3x	Corey Hart	69	.333
4x	Omar Infante	55	.364
5x	Melky Cabrera	65	.369
6x	B.J. Upton	73	.370
7x	Emilio Bonifacio	155	.381
8x	Emmanuel Burriss	70	.386
9x	Brendan Ryan	75	.387
10x	Ted Lilly	66	.394

The next set of leaderboards are for hit%, out%, and sac% out of fair bunts.   

Rank	Name	Fair Bunts	Hit%
1	Ichiro Suzuki	37	.568
2	Lastings Milledge	25	.480
3	Jacoby Ellsbury	38	.474
4	Gregor Blanco	60	.450
5	Angel Pagan	36	.444
6	Jose Reyes	40	.425
7	Rafael Furcal	48	.417
8	Alexi Casilla	60	.417
9	Michael Bourn	99	.404
10	Carlos Gomez	117	.385

Rank	Name	Fair Bunts	Out%
1	Josh Anderson	26	.615
2	Emilio Bonifacio	59	.525
3	Joey Gathright	54	.519
4	Juan Pierre	107	.505
5	Tony Gwynn	39	.487
6	Rafael Furcal	48	.479
7	Carlos Gomez	117	.479
8	Emmanuel Burriss	27	.444
9	Nyjer Morgan	100	.440
10	Willy Taveras	107	.439

Rank	Name	Fair Bunts	Sac%
1	Braden Looper	25	.960
2	Jamie Moyer	29	.931
3	Ricky Nolasco	28	.893
4	Roy Oswalt	34	.882
5	Hiroki Kuroda	30	.867
6	Barry Zito	35	.857
7	Ryan Dempster	50	.840
8	Clayton Kershaw	42	.833
9	Livan Hernandez	28	.821
10	Derek Lowe	37	.811

Unsurprisingly, all of the sacrifice leaders are pitchers.  The first position players to appear on the list are Daric Barton (.760), Yuniesky Betancourt (.724), and Jamey Carroll (.720).

Like I did last week, I will end with a glance at the best overall bunters with linear weights - this includes a weighting of their hits, sacrifices, and outs, and also takes into account missed and foul bunts.  Again, I will present in a counting form and in the form of bunting runs / 100 pitches.  However, in order to (hopefully) make it more intuitive, the rate stat will be scaled to the league average bunt as opposed to the league average event.  Over the past three seasons, the average bunt has been worth -3.53 runs per 100 pitches, so that will be what I consider "average," or 0.  Onto the best and worst bunters of the past three years:

Rank	Name	Bunt Runs
1	Ichiro Suzuki	5.41
2	Alexi Casilla	4.67
3	Gregor Blanco	4.32
4	Jacoby Ellsbury	3.87
5	Angel Pagan	3.77
6	Michael Bourn	2.70
7	Rafael Furcal	2.16
8	Erick Aybar	1.98
9	Cliff Pennington	1.94
10	Gerald Laird	1.84
1x	Juan Pierre	-9.54
2x	Ryan Dempster	-6.57
3x	Ubaldo Jimenez	-6.42
4x	Bronson Arroyo	-6.08
5x	Zach Duke	-5.88
6x	Mike Pelfrey	-5.69
7x	Ted Lilly	-5.54
8x	Derek Lowe	-5.44
9x	Orlando Hudson	-5.35
10x	Chad Billingsley	-5.00

Rank	Name	Bunt Runs / 100
1	Ichiro Suzuki	9.97
2	Angel Pagan	8.99
3	Jacoby Ellsbury	8.31
4	Alexi Casilla	8.19
5	Gregor Blanco	7.65
6	Cliff Pennington	6.26
7	Rafael Furcal	6.07
8	Coco Crisp	5.78
9	Gerald Laird	5.67
10	Jose Reyes	5.37
1x	Mike Pelfrey	-7.00
2x	Jeff Suppan	-6.33
3x	Ubaldo Jimenez	-6.20
4x	Zach Duke	-5.66
5x	Derek Lowe	-5.54
6x	Ted Lilly	-4.87
7x	Jair Jurrjens	-4.86
8x	Cole Hamels	-4.70
9x	Ryan Dempster	-4.69
10x	Clayton Kershaw	-4.22

As usual, the trailers include a lot of pitchers, who don't tend to get a lot of bunt hits.  The first position players that appear on the list are Chris Young (-2.54), Brendan Ryan (-2.42), Tony Gwynn (-2.29), Yuniesky Betancourt (-1.70), and Juan Pierre (-1.13).  Pierre has appeared a lot in these two posts, typically as a trailer in some category.  Based on the data for these three years, he doesn't have the ability to be a productive enough bunter to offset his great number of bunt attempts.  In fact, of the ten players that topped the attempt% list I showed at the beginning of this post, Pierre was the only player to grade out as a below-average bunter.  One other note - I'm skeptical of the bunt runs values for Pennington and Furcal since Pennington had a bunt double and Furcal had two.  Bunt doubles are essentially flukes, and since doubles are worth a lot more than singles are, they skew the run value totals.  

With that, I'll put an end to this venture into bunting.  There are more questions that I'd like to investigate (team bunting statistics and the impact of leverage on bunting as two that come to mind), and most importantly, I think we just need more data.  For the time being, I would like to recognize Ichiro Suzuki as the best bunter of the past three years.